after Mathias Svalina

#08262 You are standing in a misshapen alley, cursing the bus for never staying on schedule and yourself for still believing in buses. It is winter in Michigan, and you imagine there is no worse place to be a person than winter in Michigan, but the Michiganders keep telling you to buck up, there is no such thing as bad weather. You, a sane person, know there is, in fact, such a thing as bad weather, so you step sideways into an old church. But the church is not a church, it is an off-broadway musical. The director comes to you and says “Meryl Streep?” “There’s been a mistake,” you say, “I’m not Meryl Streep,” but you are whisked away to a changing room full of hats. You are asked to remove all your clothes and don as many hats as you wish. You learn hats make terrible skirts. You step out on stage wearing hats that are selectively placed and you learn, mortified, than when they said to remove all your clothes they only meant street clothes, and there was a beautifully made ballgown hanging on the back of your door, which was also a net, and which was supposed to catch you whole, your body also belonging to a yellow snapper, who opens its mouth and swallows the theater covered in snow.

#47511 You are wandering around a very large Ikea, and for several hours you make bets on which couples will break up over duvet covers. You develop a complicated scoring system based on how many times one checks the LSU game and how many times the other says “this isn’t right, right?” but when you start looking for an exit, the painted arrows point inwards. It’s been weeks, and you’ve seen the Ikea signs change from Christmas sales to Valentines Day layaways but you can’t seem to find who is changing them. You gorge on swedish-definitely-not-horse-meatballs and caramel-definitely-not-addiction-forming-cinnabons, and on the 100th day of being held hostage you find that the Ikea is not an Ikea at all, it is a diorama of an Ikea. You are a messy third grader’s school project. You understand now why your arm only bends up to a 70 degree angle, and why the couples never seem to fall out of love so much as fall out of the frame.

#73856 You walk into a bar and it’s filled with every person you have ever had sex with, but they don’t know that. This is somehow both your worst nightmare and every other Tuesday at the JewelBox, which brings in every butch who thought Bend it like Beckham should’ve ended with the two female leads falling in love. You sit down at the bar, because at this point it would be rude to leave. Joanne, your bartender and one night stand from six months ago, has recognized you. Joanne pours a doubleshot into a glass, but instead of liquid it’s just her faking her orgasms. The whole room stares, and you don’t know what to do, so you take a sip. You try to thank her but your mouth is full of fake moaning. All you can think is how impolite it is to talk with your mouth full, and how you desperately want to spit the sound into your napkin. Later, you’ll wish you did. For weeks, your stomach becomes the bat signal for straight men. They keep coming up to you in public as though their services are needed, asking if they can watch.