DRUNK READING FEAR OF FLYING IN THE BATH

drunk reading fear of flying in the bath on a tuesday evening, angelica elizabeth barea-marie ponders the spectrum of intimacy between women, half listening to the ten o'clock news playing on the television in the next room. she recalls how her mother, when she had been alive, used to do this same thing. it strikes her as incredibly romantic - to lay there as her mother once had, reminiscing the days of the radio. oh how beautiful her mother seemed, in retrospect. despite her loneliness and graying hair and sagging tits that floated to the top of the bathwater, angelica elizabeth barea-marie's mother had been a beautiful woman; strong, full of grace. she wonders if her mother had been a lesbian, or just heavily wounded, or maybe just uninterested in anyone.

angelica spreads her legs and let the hot water graze her insides, the drone of the news fading away. she pictures margot tenenbaum in the bath and touches herself. she pictures her ex-husband in an apartment three blocks away, masturbating at the same time to the same image.

at this moment angelica hears a lone note play from the wooden piano in the foyer. there is someone in her home. she raises herself out of the bath, surprisingly prepared and unafraid, wraps herself in a towel, and walks to the hallway. she finds herself standing at the opposite end of the hallway as an older man, his finger suspended above the key. both angelica and her intruder appear equally surprised, and also equally drunk and depressed. the man, without saying anything, turns and leaves. angelica locks the door behind him.

the bath water is now lukewarm. the note rings in her head - A flat, she thinks, but she is just guessing. she imagines how different her life might have been if she had been born with perfect pitch. she thinks again of margot tenenbaum and tells herself, this week i will learn how to accomplish basic tasks with my toes. i will get a pedicure. maybe this will bring me closer to beauty. i need something special, she whispers out loud to her now empty home.

the spectrum of intimacy between women, a feminist studies professor had explained to her and a couple hundred other eager and anxious young women, is everything that has ever happened between women. every bit of love and conversation. angelica elizabeth barea-marie touches herself again and falls asleep early, naked, above the comforter on her bed. and the note plays on, in all of her dreams.

Trying to Be Someone

Your therapist asks you: "hypothetically, if you were depressed, what would you do?" You answer: "write about a life of depression and drinking coffee, while drinking coffee, depressed." You are pleased with this answer, an artist's answer, a writer's answer, until your therapist responds: "case and point." Case and point? You distrust this phrase, find no validity in it, and are pretty sure it has no real meaning. You would not be surprised if all therapists have a clipboard of phrases behind their desks to tell to patients, all equally meaningless - like "Does this ever make you feel like sleeping all day?" or "I think we are making some serious progress." You sit there refusing the label of depressed until you realized that if you were an artist, if you were a writer, you probably would have produced at least one suicide-attempt-inspired masterpiece by now.