Lizette is Thinking of Dying
Lizette is thinking of dying. She is pushing her cart around a Target store on a Saturday. In the cart is a plastic storage container, two candles, and a gold waste paper basket. Around Lizette, other Target zombies mill about, pushing carts, stopping at displays, picking up products, saying to themselves, “Oh, this is only ten dollars?” It doesn’t matter what the item actually is. The checkout line is unusually long, it is a good thing everyone is equipped with a Starbucks.
Lizette notices in particular the couples shopping together. They are straight. She tries to imagine herself shopping with a girlfriend. They stand in an aisle, Lizette leaning on the cart, and the girlfriend is holding up a bath towel, and saying, “We really do need new towels.” Lizette sucks on a Starbucks. “Yeah, sounds good honey,” Lizette says. They kiss, and Lizette imagines everyone looking, perhaps uncomfortable, but also unable to look away. In her fantasy, Lizette and her girlfriend spend an hour in the cosmetics section of Target, carelessly filling their shopping cart with cheap drugstore makeup.
Ah! Lizette thinks, I’ve reached peak sellout!
She buys a coffee on her way out.
I have nothing to complain about, she thinks, I have plenty to complain about. She tries to practice the art of self compassion and not minimizing her legitimate bullshit. She decides to try to stop thinking so much. Thinking seems to get her into trouble, especially when all thought roads seem to lead to her recent ex. They broke up about six months ago, and he moved out four months ago.
Lizette is thinking of dying, but she doesn’t really want to die. At home, Lizette signs into OkCupid. She switches it from “I don’t want to be seen by straight people” to the default, which is just a lot of men. Lizette passes on all of them, except one, that she likes with no small amount of consternation and guilt. Am I really queer? No more men — no more men! For real this time — no more men! She sighs and toggles her settings again to make the men disappear. She swipes through the remaining people:
Too many hair colors.
Ew a Burning Man photo.
Eh, too many animals.
Yuck, a couple.
Wannabe Christian Grey.
Don’t like that lipstick.
Which one are they?
Can’t anyone take a good photo?
She reviews her own profile. She likes her photos, especially the one where she is wearing her hair up and her makeup in tones of nude. She wonders if she indicates her ethnicity if she will get any messages. But then she decides she doesn’t want anyone who might exotify or dismiss her. Then she thinks that maybe excluding the information might prevent her from finding other queer femme Latinas. She signs out of OkCupid without deciding either way.
Lizette is depressed, and it makes her tired. She stretches out on the couch, and smokes pot, and watches a series of crime documentaries. She drifts in and out of dreamland.
Around late afternoon, Lizette wakes up for real. She is thinking of dying. She is also thinking about how she forgot to take her medication that morning, and puts a palm to her forehead. Shit, she thinks, No wonder I feel so damn awful. She is on new psychiatric medication, and for the past month since her mental health diagnosis, her brain has felt like scrambled eggs in an effort to try to normalize. So I can feel a different kind of awful, she thinks.
She lies on her stomach on the couch, hangs her arms down, and opens Tinder on her phone, and it barely loads before she cancels the operation.
The breakup is not why she is depressed. She is depressed because she is just sometimes depressed, just like sometimes she talks too fast and impulsively buys storage containers at Target. She lies on her back on the floor. She thinks about dying.
No lesbian will ever love me because I don’t like dogs, Lizette thinks, And I don’t like cats. I’d rather have nice furniture. She thinks about her gay Target fantasy. And I love capitalism.
She thinks about how the day is almost over, and reminds herself that her value is not based on her productivity. She has a leather chair in her living room that her job has afforded her because she is a software developer in San Francisco. It’s just for now, she reminds herself. She desperately wants to be a writer, and everyday she wonders if she is just too cowardly to actually be a writer. Then she remembers that she might die tomorrow — that anyone can just die at any moment — and she decides that even with the depression and the confusion and the frustration, she’s living a good life.
But still … But still … she starts thinking of her ex, how happy he made her at times, and how much he devastated her in the end. But still … she wants only him, and she cannot fathom having desire for anyone else — man, woman, or anything in-between or beyond.
Lizette makes herself go into the kitchen and heat up some food for dinner. She thinks about how lucky she is to have this food — local seasonal produce, free range poultry, and plenty of olive oil, and a cast iron skillet. She is very lucky to eat so well. She is still thinking of dying, but the thought is a quiet one.
It’s the weekend and she decides it’s okay to go to bed early. She smokes more pot and pulls back the covers of her bed and sinks into the flannel sheets. She cuddles with her laptop, puts on some reality TV show. She lets her body relax into the warmth, the cloak of duvet and pillows snug around her. Everyone says she has too many pillows — she thinks a pillow princess can never have enough pillows.
She reaches into her nightstand, searches with her hand for the vibrator, and finds it.
She presses the vibrator between her legs, and as she arches her back in the glow of the laptop, an uninvited memory of having sex with her ex shoves its way into the movie theater of her mind. She loses her grasp on the orgasm she was working on, thinking, Ugh, go away! She thinks about the way he moaned into her ear. She turns off the vibrator. Lizette is thinking of dying.
But then — fuck it — Lizette doesn’t try to fight it. His sounds of pleasure turned her on then, and they turn her on now. She lets her mind drift farther along the thought of arousal, and little by little, memories from other encounters with other people flutter before her. The BDSM scene in the living room of a traditional New Orleans house with a lovely and skilled woman, the way he used to touch her, the way her body opened up around her fingers, the one night when they fucked until the sun came up, and both got sick with tonsillitis.
Lizette tenses her legs, and squeezes her whole body, and then she lets go. She shudders, crying out. Then drops the vibrator on the floor by the bed, and sighs.
Lizette is thinking of dying — and indeed, she’s caught her little death. She is reborn. She is, at least, attracted to herself. I wonder if that’s an orientation, she thinks, Attraction to oneself. Shit I’m a sociopath. No wait, if I were a sociopath I wouldn’t know I’m a sociopath … right?
But Lizette just shrugs to herself, and, surprisingly, doesn’t think of dying. It’s been another day, and she’s made it to the end, and that’s really all she needs to get her to tomorrow.
