Rant - Polly

...leaves doing everything for a dollar.

How is that a legacy? A stupid yearbook tradition, 1998, when ink was still printed and indelible. Do they even print yearbooks today? If they don’t, the girl in the corner who talks to not one single boy in three years except to ask about homework assignments might have the opportunity to bravely ask that her legacy to the school be changed, and not illustrate some kind of propensity toward whorishness.

Sophomore year, one conversation, one that felt like one tenth of a conversation. Andy Barr, six-foot three and empty, sat at the head of the wooden table in our fancy cafeteria. Sunlight streamed through stain glass windows on twenty foot walls, illuminating the dust falling into the institutional slop on our plates. “Your omelette smells like my dog,” is what my roommate Kristen said to me after I waited in line for forty minutes to get custom-made ham and cheese and eggs. At least she was nice enough to let me sit next to her during sunday brunch. Andy had a broken hand from a football scrimmage and was complaining that his ‘pussy finger’ was worthless for month. How could boys be so raw. Kristen laughed. I ate my omelette and tried to pretend it didn’t smell like Kristen’s dog. I stopped listening. I had already stopped listening.

“No, I wouldn’t do it! Maybe, like, a million dollars...no, no! Not even.” Kristen was laughing.

Andy shook his head. “What if the guy was hot? No one would know, you’re on a plane, you’d never see him again.”

“A dollar.” I can still remember realizing it had come out of my mouth. Shock value. Listen to me.  I stared at my omelette. The girl from the corner who doesn’t talk to boys and eats dog-scent omelettes just opened her fucking mouth, oh yeah. The girl who has never kissed a boy on the lips would fuck a guy in an aiport bathroom for a dollar, if he was hot. I didn't mean it, I just wanted to be part of the conversation, and it came out like milk. But it burned. The words burned as soon as they hit the air. Burned, but never disappeared. Two years later, when the powers that be in the class put together the page of legacies, Andy Barr reached up his ass and pulled out a tiny nugget of humiliation. Just for me. How sweet. Fuck you.

Polly Witker leaves...

Resurrection - Polly

"I think you should just email him. I understand what you're saying about wanting to be chased but...unless of course you're just playing hard to get." Peter tipped his pint glass a little, a tiny gulp.

"I'm not playing anything, I swear! Just, I don't want to chase. Be the chaser. You know what I mean." Ellie took a larger sip of her beer.

Peter pursed his lips and looked up. A familiar expression. One that had eluded her for a while, and here it was again. Here it was again.

"How long has it been since the last communication?"
"A week."
"Oh, so just email him. You have nothing to lose."
"It's a good point." Except you. You, you, you, she tried to say with her eyes. Her heart never spoke loudly enough.

Insomia - Polly

Insomnia

It’s night sweats, and thoughts coming in waves that you can almost see crashing onto the backs of your eyelids. Like panic in slow motion, because the lights are off and the sound of silence buzzes like an almost-soothing lullaby, but not quite. Counting sheep, ice cream cones, job application rejections, sexual partners, whatever - it’s all the same thing and sometimes it works. but usually it doesn’t.  So tired you can’t sleep, as they say, so you get up and pad over to your laptop, one hand rubbing your eyes and the other outstretched and aiming at the apple symbol. the only thing glowing in the darkness.  maybe an hour or three later you’ve written five pages of slop, of drivel, with a few sentences of brilliance swirled into the mess.  When you do finally collapse into sleep, the insomnia temporarily stayed, you have something to show for it. At least there’s that.

I’m jealous.

I fall asleep on my third breath after turning out the light, and wake to the sound of my iPhone alarm, what, it can't be, I just fell asleep five minutes ago! Dead to the world, like a baby, a blanketed beached whale. I have no middle-of-the-night blabber folder saved to my desktop, and I wish I did. I wish for once I didn’t sleep clear through eight or nine hours out of every twenty-four. What a waste.