Triptych of Pain

Rhoda never knocks. She refuses, stomping her black foam sandals down in proverbial mud, to walk to the door without me. No matter how often I tell her how my parents love her, she remains stubborn, seatbelt still buckled. “It’s easy to impress them,” I told her on a night I don’t remember very well. I can only picture her face, facing one another with our legs trapping the other by the waist. “I’ve never really had friends that stick around, and you’re pretty consistent.” She didn’t believe me, though.

Today, like always, I see the back of her head through her window tint and layers of peeling stickers through her rearview window. She sticks them everywhere but the bumper; don’t wanna scratch the paint. She parks to the right of the road, nestled among rain logged leaves in the gutter, sheltered in the shadow of an oak tree bursting with green leaves. The sun is nearly overhead; soon, her car will be a sauna. The cream-colored concrete of the driveway seems to sizzle against my heels as I walk. There’s an aged blister on my left ankle, dried now. The new skin matches the rest of me. There’s a jagged cat scratch reaching across my pinky all the way to my third toe. My feet are more frequently blue than they are pink, making every scar on my toes look purple. There is a compulsion within me to abandon shoes; to feel the dry, the wet, and the scalding. The baking concrete, the pebble from the road jammed into the middle of my heel and breaking through callouses, keep my feet on the ground instead of floating up into the atmosphere. It’s always been this way, and today is a good day.

I rasp on the window, snarling with my palms slapped flat against the glass, with every intention of scaring her. Rhoda nearly jumps out of her skin, and I hear her muffled cackle as she fights to calm her rapid breathing. She gathers her bag, stuffed with bubblegum, a lukewarm water bottle, her duct tape wallet, and year-old crumbs as I dance from one foot to another. The asphalt is much harsher than the driveway. She rises through the door, and I hold it like a gentleman. Despite the heat, Rhoda will always be wearing black. The lace camisole is riddled with holes, worn down since 12^th grade, low cut. There it is, glaring at me. The huge white bandage, flat across the top of her breast, nestled beneath her collarbones; fastened to the skin so intensely every edge is smothered. Rusty blood like watercolor dotted so faintly inside the bandage, barely peaking through the protective top layer. I feel like a drooling pervert; I don’t mean to stare. I don’t mention it, but we’re both going red in the cheeks.

“Come on, loser.” I go to step on her toes, but she’s nimble even in platforms. “It’s too hot out here, I’m melting!” We run to my room, giddy like 5^th graders about to pierce each other’s ears, forgetting to pick the gravel out from between my toes in my rush.

I ask her after we’ve been giggling like silver bells, sprawled across my bedroom floor, while the joy still lingers in the air. I’d bit my tongue for an hour, sneaking glances at the gradually growing stains on the hulking Band-Aid. Every time she flourished with laughter, the gauze grows darker. I know myself well enough; I was going to pry no matter what. She didn’t answer me directly; her lips disappeared as she began to chew at the dead skin highlighted with glitter gloss. She didn’t look at me as she peeled the bandage away, taking dead skin and peach fuzz with it.

A rigid heart the size of my palm, cut into her pale skin in shallow wounds. It’s drawn in beautifully precise lines that stretched just a bit too far past the borders. It’s scabbed unevenly, some spots a rusty brown while others still glisten beneath the ceiling light. Simple cuts composing a simple 2D heart buried in her skin, already healing into a scar. I can pinpoint what problem spots darkened the gauze. I can picture her process so clearly; her fingers with ragged cuticles, pinching the razor between thumb and pointer. Her other hand pulling skin taut to nail that Byzantine geometry. I imagine her ears blushing scarlet as the blood swims through her body, racing through veins to the wound, spilling down her chest plate and mapping out ribs where it gathers instead of trickling. I imagine she did it in her bed, laying on her back. It is vibrant, coming into focus behind my eyelids like a kinky Polaroid.

“Should I be worried? Is this like, a suicide thing?” I’ve never been good at this shit, but it’s an honest effort. I was at my best in 10^th grade, when everyone wanted to kill themselves. Now, I’m a big girl who says she’s 25 to appear more interesting, though she’s only just hit 20. I’m less obsessed with mortality, and more-so with rent. I’ve lost my touch.

She’s blushing, holding the bandage caked with dried life in her hand, flicking the frayed tape lightly with her fingers. Her nails are black, bitten to the nub. The camisole strings have fallen of both shoulders. We’re propped up on our elbows, studying one another. Her eyes are wet like a doe’s. Her lashes heavy and clumped with mascara. Her foundation has already disappeared from her nose, lost to sleeves and sunglasses. Her lip-gloss, scented like pear and plastic, jumped from her mouth to the rim of a dry Mountain Dew can.

Sprawled across the carpet, the fan churning at its highest setting over our shaven legs tied in a knot. We met at 18, still acting like middle-school girls who don’t know how to ask for affection and wear their mothers’ makeup. We’ve grown up, bit by bit, learning how to flirt and what tops get us free drinks. We never could crack how to stop touching like lovers, not knowing where else to get it from. The bright day sneaks through the blinds, casting long lines across Rhoda’s stomach. The light curves with the peaks and depths of her.

“Seriously, should I call someone or something?” I ask again. It’s not graceful, but it’s genuine.

“No, no. I just-well, you’re gonna call me crazy.” she said. She’s mumbling, half of her words getting caught in her throat. “It’s not bad.” She won’t look me in the eyes. “I just like how warm the skin feels when it bleeds.”

“Oh. I think I get it.”

~

Every summer, I cut my hair to my jaw. It’s tradition at this point. Sometimes with bangs, sometimes with layers; always jagged and never neat.

If I don’t, I get heat sick. Not as detrimental as a stroke, but still, something worth crying about. I wake up in a puddle of sweat that’s soaked through whatever clothes I’ve worn to bed. My body will be so hot, I wake up panting to relieve some tension. Tendrils of hair curl in spirals against my neck and forehead, stinking of coconut conditioner and Moroccan hair oil. In the despair of a Floridian summer, I always cut my hair to relieve the heat. I still wake up wet and pale, though; and my hair gets ugly after a week. It grew from hormonal migraines, a deep ache like a rusty drill at where skull meets spine, into a sweaty writhing ball of nausea in my stomach when the covers don’t circulate enough air at night. Like energy, pain is never destroyed; it just moves somewhere else.

I know how to cope, though. The first step is to move to the bathroom with as much haste as I can manage. Second, press my forehead to the ground, soaking up that cool bliss, pray to God that this will be the last time. I’m at my most devout when I’m on the tile; the bathroom has become my confessional. Next, move to the toilet, the bathmat a barrier between thin-skinned knees and grout. For the climax, I dump my dinner down the pipes and thank God. Lastly, brush my teeth, with the pressure gone, and sleep with only sheets till the sun slips through the tight blinds. It’s routine, as normal as a midnight snack.

It’s August; summer is reaching its end, and humidity still lingers well into night. Orlando’s heat sticks to the skin a bit more persistently than Jacksonville’s. It wraps around my wrists and ankles no matter where I go, crawling into the collar of my shirt and up the legs of my pants. Once the sun is gone, the hot air settles like a weighted blanket, smothering any pockets of cool air. I am no exception, and my hair has just grown past my chin. It’s still ugly, and my face is still red from the heat.

Tonight, I am sleeping in an apartment for the first time. I’ll call it “my apartment” eventually, but it’s still too early. My posters have yet to be strung up; they rest at the end of my bed, still tightly wound up with hair ties, leaving the walls naked and white in the meantime. The first time I moved, I was put up on the fourth floor of a dorm building, stuck to the ground by the weight of living alone. My mama stuck each one with precision wherever I pointed. Fiona Apple over my pillow, then Mitski to the left on my window. She left me on the ground, a pool of crumpled tissues at my knees, obeying every ask. I didn’t stand till she began getting ready to leave, and then I clung to her waist, cherishing the smell of her dry shampoo. It was like learning how to walk again. Tomorrow, I’ll hang my posters myself, and they’ll be crooked. Tonight, though, I turned twenty a month ago, and this isn’t my room yet.

There is nothing special about the puddle of sweat I wake up in. There is nothing new about the heartbeat in my throat, and the churning tidepool in my stomach. The only thing that is unique tonight is the bathroom I stumble to. I got the bigger room in the apartment at the cost of my bathroom being in the hallway. The doorknob slips from my sweaty grasp as if oiled, and I’m losing time. This is supposed to be quick and easy; it’s second nature now.

The bathroom is foreign with aged tiles and flaking paint on the baseboards. The mirror still holds the fingerprints of the previous tenant, a heavy haze on the glass where they wiped away steam. Black gunk hides in the corners and sharp edges of cabinets and porcelain; it’s all soothing. A crystal clean bathroom makes me feel like Patrick Bateman; it should be a little gross. There is no family; Mama’s ears quickly grew keen to my dry heaving even through the walls, but she won’t be listening for me tonight. My forehead finds the floor, hugging my knees against my chest as the hymns begin to bounce around my skull. Make it quick. Make it easy. Make it burn, just a little, so I remember to sleep in cotton.

My favorite singer said she masturbates to Soviet Union architecture, because of her love for Brutalism, in an art book vlog. “I love things that are so secure of themselves, even at the cost of something else,” she told me, as I soaked up her words through a bright screen. I’d only ever seen Brutalism as ugly; big slabs of concrete with no justification for their existence. There is no beauty in their heavy grays and bruising corners. I’d felt disgusted by Brutalism, until I heard it described as erotic. Only then did its violence make sense.

I move from unfamiliar floor to a new toilet. A strand of hair clings to the seat, next to a clump of dust missed by Clorox wipes. I need a rug; this floor is tearing up my knees. I can only recognize the miserable pressure drowning out the rest of the world. I lift the seat. I heave out all my extra air. I ready my fingers, still smelling so faintly of lavender and tea tree oil bodywash. Pointer and middle finger; these nails are always the shortest. The cuticles are torn from gnawing in a drunken haze a few nights ago. It should’ve healed by now, but I’ve never been one to stop picking. It’s worse than it was yesterday, the slivers of dead skin are crawling down my fingers towards my knuckles, crusted yellow with dried pus. I would’ve started chewing again if I weren’t preoccupied.

The trick is to swallow around the fingers. I cry so much more when I simply hold the fingers down my throat, coaxing the vomit out with the light caress of my uvula, like a lover tracing the veins in my wrist. When I swallow, the body flexes but can’t close all the way. It’s not bad; it’s natural. Call it biohacking, or whatever name comes to mind to excuse this behavior. Call it necessary, or whatever adjective can be used to dismiss the pleasure in the bile burn as it comes up. I didn’t need to hold my fingers there for long. The moment the middle finger brushed the roof of my mouth, half of a burger (no onion) and a medium fry tore out of my body and into the water. The tomato taste is the most persistent when it all comes back up. A colorful swirl of chunks, whisking itself together over and over.

It's a weird relationship. It's not vomit itself that I appreciate; that’s fucking gross. I love things so secure of themselves, even at the cost of me. I don’t have to be anything but a body when I throw up. My stomach caves in, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t revel in it. That all comes after, though. When I puke, I don’t control it; I can’t. I am the basis of human function. I am a beating heart and a bucket of acid. I am seized by something greater than me. It coats my teeth, lingers on my tongue. It’s human, it’s natural, it’s life. Vomiting is the nearest to God I’ve ever been.

I trade fingers down my throat for a thumb stroking my Adam’s apple. I run my fingers over my ribs when I’m done, and I’ve washed the chunks of bread and red meat off my hands. I brush my teeth, the foam congealing at the corners of my mouth, like I’m rabid. The taste of it may be gone, but the heat of it never leaves till the morning. I’m grateful; I like the way my breath is so hot after.

~

“Would you touch it?”

Jen and I dangle our feet out of open windows. This parking lot is only five minutes from my house, but I told Mama I’d be staying the night with a friend thirty minutes in the opposite direction. Jen and I stick together out of necessity more than anything; we’re the only one’s home for the summer. I don’t think we would’ve lasted past high school if we were anywhere but Jacksonville, but loneliness drives people mad. She still calls me a favorite, and I genuinely wish I could believe her. The floor of her car is smothered by a layer of beer cans, and a stray bottle of Jaeger. It’s sucked dry, of course; all of it. My face is flushed with Tequila and Capri-Sun. We stabbed the bags to death with those toothpick yellow straws and wrung them out above a metal bottle resigned to liquor storage. It stinks of skinned knees and hundred proof Captain Morgan’s. I fucking hate Tequila. It makes me so annoying.

“Touch what?” I wasn’t listening. Call me stupid, but call me honest first. The cigarette filter, stuck to my clammy lips, is my top priority due its immediacy. The cigarette takes some dead skin off my lips as I release it from my maw, and I feel the blood pulsing in my cupid’s bow. I fight tooth and nail with a dying Bic lighter. The liquor has cocooned me in a warm blanket, and now I need something warm for my guts. Camel Red, courtesy of Jen. I smoked my last Marlboro the night before, and I’m still the youngest out of my friends, sitting pretty at eighteen. No one cards in Orlando, especially near my university; but I’m home now, and Jacksonville hates its youth. I ash my vice in an empty Coors Banquet can teetering on the tiny center console.

“The Pain Star.” I can feel my eyes glaze over. “I literally just fucking explained it.” She speaks to me like I’m two feet tall. Car Seat Headrest plays from speakers inside the car doors, begging to be heard over my heart pounding in my head. The whiny voice of a wallowing, stick-thin man bounces off the cans, spilling out over our clammy bodies and through the open windows. I hate Will Toledo. I want to tell her, your music sucks and your car smells like shit. Instead, I say, “Can you just tell me again, please?”

“Actually listen this time, okay?” I’m a good friend, so I don’t roll my eyes. “So, the Pain Star is this concept, right? It’s a star, it happens every thousand years, and suddenly it’s in front of you. I cannot stress how absolutely rare this thing is.” She pauses for drama, the streetlight behind her gives her a halo.

“And, if you touch it, you will experience the most pain that could feasibly exist, and then some. It is the most painful experience in the world, and you don’t have to touch it. There’s no prize, it’s not like you’ll never feel pain again or anything. You just get to know what it feels like, and there’s no one else around. This choice is entirely between you, and the Star.” She lights her own Camel, taking a long, slow pull. Her lips glow as the smoke disappears down into her lungs. It’s almost like the flush in her cheeks is from a spotlight, and I feel more like audience than friend. I’m listening this time, though, fighting the hum of my own heartbeat in my skull.

“Do you touch it?”

I take my own drag; much more erratically than she did. The smoke prickles like splinters all the way down to my chest. Pain can’t be created, only changed. I’ve already felt the Pain Star, just spread out throughout the years. Dodgeballs have knocked teeth out and left my lips swollen. I’ve puked up my guts, over and over, till there was nothing to give but bile. I’ve left skin and muscle in the asphalt after falling off my bike. I’ve left pieces of myself in stains on sheets; blood, cum, and sweat. I’ve touched bruises in the shower with a heavy hand to remind myself that my heart is beating. I’ve suffered through living, and all it did was make my heartbeat echo a little louder around my skull. Nicotine always makes me tremble. I can’t steady my hands in time to answer.

“Of course I do. What am I, stupid?”