PULP It Like It’s Hot: The Public Pooping Of The Pants

I hear my stomach scream audibly. I grow desperate. I consider the bushes. “I could crouch under that,” my addled mind offers.

I ’m an anxious creature, a life-long nail-biter — red, wet swollen cuticles and the sharp click of teeth on teeth have been the muted but consistent orchestral backdrop to my existence; something akin to a Philip Glass score. It’s all nerves over here.

I worry about whether taking chicken eggs from beneath all those feather-tufted warm bottoms somehow breaks the hens’ hearts. I worry about my own mother, her beautifully wan face, and nearly translucent face strung with blue veins like so many fairy lights winking out their last illuminations in a paper castle.

I worry about hungry children, gay kids in Idaho, women in the south, the continent of Africa, and every beaten dog.

I worry I’m not good enough, that I’ll need dentures from all my nail-biting. I worry my boyfriend will never write his novel, that my brother will never be in a band; I worry I’ll never understand theoretical physics or geometry and if I ever have a child they’ll think me too plain to even go to therapy about.