Julie is pulling me toward every tree hunting for scents. Man and dog, she knows her control over me. Her Ridgeback DNA is the reason she hates cats and wants to eat all the squirrels and rabbits in the park. As my licensed ESA, she is present to take away stress and make me happy, but I’d rather see her happy. Her copper-colored fur, full brown eyes, white belly and white paws get me every time. I hope I don’t disappoint her. 

She finds her spot and squats near a patch of wet grass where the water falls from the tops of blades like tears. I look around so as not to stare at her while she is doing her business (I know I wouldn’t want anyone looking at me) and the trees next to Lake Michigan are solemn and spiny. Currently they all look the same— naked and damp, subsumed heavy bark from melted ice and burdensome branches reaching out into the nothing of an overcast Chicago spring. I am lost in far-flung thoughts about the lists my therapist tells me to make in order to work out my depression—how “having a plan” is the first key to success and that depression is something cumulative, a threshold, a series of deepening levels and how it takes a while to sink down, then conversely, a while to work your way back up. 

Julie tugs on her leash and scrapes her nails through the dirt, awakening me from my woolgathering. Before she pulls my arm out of its socket, I bend down with my green-baggy hand and pick up her tubular poop. I talk to her on the walk home, entertaining her as well as myself and ignoring my dysfunctional bowels for just a few hours. You wanna go home girl? You want a treat? You wanna go sleepies? We have to walk fast girl— I hope we can make it home in time.

■■■

A list of things I see in the park with Julie:

1. A decapitated, red plastic ring missing its candied head.

2. An empty bag of cookies.

3. A crushed water bottle with the decal removed. 

4. A pile of stained comforters, which may or may not have a human underneath. 

5. Dog shit.

6. Tire tracks.

7. Feathers.

8. A flyer laminated to a lamppost that says birds are not real, but are merely a conveyance for government surveillance.

9. Twigs.

■■■

I’m in the middle of another flare-up— this is what happens with IBS-D. I’m eating mashed potatoes for lunch—the instant-in-a-box kind (sans cream) because I can’t handle dairy, either. This can go on for days or weeks. Sometimes I make the switch to soups or plain white rice. Once a week, if the intestinal fates allow, I purchase a bland rotisserie chicken from the market up the block for $4.99. I take it home to my two-person table against the wall in my kitchen, where I have already laid out a setting for one. I tuck my napkin into my shirt at the neckline, add salt and the smallest smidge of pepper (this is a treat, after all) and pick and plod with a patient knife and fork until most of the insipid chicken has been consumed. Occasionally, I will light candles so I can have a date with myself, and Julie sits next to me begging, occasionally getting small bites of meat. 

I am scheduled to see my GI shrink tonight, since I saw my depression/anxiety shrink yesterday. Who knew mental health could be so siloed? We talked mostly about how I am a single gay man with no human friends, which makes talking to my depression shrink even more depressing. Tonight, my GI shrink will help me balance my digestive system through dialogue. I purposely keep my appointments close together in order to maximize their effectiveness on my spirit.

But what I really want is fantasy. Bliss. A life not yet attainable. This is what happens when I watch Big Pharma’s commercials late at night while Julie and I snuggle and watch Forensic Files together. I become encapsulated with hope and the absurd desire to live in those commercials. I want to thrive in that bubble, a life protected in Pharmaceutical Bliss.

I want to be in the charity softball game filled with people who can’t run or hit well, and they’re all smiling, feeling great, because of the pills, treatment or injection they received from the colorful banner across the screen, and if I were there, I too could finally enjoy something with the rest of the world, because that pill or treatment or injection will have rid me of my symptoms and isolation, and I will very kindly forget the old-man voiceover disclaimer about the possible side effects— death, excessive bleeding from orifices, instant blindness or deafness, becoming magnetic, alien abduction, death, sudden loss of appendages, turning into a pumpkin, skin turning green, skin falling off, death, spontaneous combustion, sterility, organ failure, death, irritability, psychotic episodes, endless vomiting and death— because look how happy they are. The bad actors whom I adore, the ones laughing while passing fake food at a picnic in the park after a game, like a family, like a community, like a bunch of people who have friends.

Unfortunately, I have yet to attain Pharmaceutical Bliss, with the effect of my current pill and shrink regimen something like putting a Band-Aid on a person in a coma— sure it looks good, but the outcome remains unchanged. My shrinks don’t fail me, rather, they prescribe me drugs that minimally help. One reduces the spasms in my intestines, making things less wonky down there. Another is an anti-depressant, which works because it is a sedative and helps me get the occasional full night’s sleep. My anti-anxiety medicine makes me forget the particular word I need in a particular situation just when I need it the most. And the medicine that regulates my stomach acid is unremarkable. What if I told all of my doctors the truth? That no matter what happens, I will never be cured, and I will never be happy until I get to live like the people in those commercials. 

Irritants for IBS include red meat, chocolate, dairy, beans, seeds, alcohol, smoking, certain fruits, anal sex, silicone butt plugs, tunnel butt plugs, vibrating butt plugs and butt plugs with a chain for easy removal butt plugs, which means my sex life, as well as any interesting foods, are completely off the menu. Delete the pleasures of food, sex and companionship and there isn’t much more to delete. Due to medicinal compounds, my libido is the size of a dust mite, my sex, softer than the mushy tip of an overripe banana.

In the next life I’ll be a pole-dancer. Fertile. My sex, zaftig. I won’t be an early-retired, white, middle-aged chunk with an emotional support animal for a partner like I am in this current, pathetic vessel. I believe in reincarnation when it suits me. I’ll become a skinny whore with a nine-inch dick. I’ll bind it up with a cat collar used as a cock ring. I’ll swing it around and bash men in the face with it. I’ll grind to some kind of house-banging techno in silhouette with a red background and a cop cap at my stripper job. A colossal smoke machine will increase my sexiness. I’ll be young and cheeky. I’ll spend little time in my messy room, a three-bedroom apartment I share with five other boys who, like me, are too busy to stay at home and lament, and we’ll each chip in one hundred dollars at the beginning of the season to get the latest Tom Ford fragrance, and the bottle will shift rooms until it is half used-up and is inevitably, stolen.

I won’t be sedentary and scared. I won’t have to worry about my bowels, about them running and ruining my life like I’m some geriatric who has already lived out the best years of their life, when that can’t possibly be true. Is this what remains? Life by restroom-proxy? If only I were younger, fresher, healthier. I wouldn’t have to worry about being excluded from my people, my tribe, my subculture. And I wouldn’t miss out on the latest fashion trends— slim or baggy, clean cut or shaggy. I’ll be a pole-dancing boy with only money and STD worries—my vitality would carry me through. Basically, I’m a homo with FOMO. 

■■■

A list of conditions I have Googled to increase my anxiety and further burden myself with diseases I probably don’t have because that’s what living in the 21st Century is mostly about:

1. SIBO, or CeBo – the latter makes me picture a neon sign at a tropical nightclub somewhere in the B.V.I.s, but the former stands for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, with symptoms such as abdominal pain and unintentional weight loss. 

2. Toxic Megacolon – which sounds like the name of a reoccurring villain in a comic book franchise, but is really a bowel blockage that can cause sepsis and emergency surgery. 

3. Ulcerative Colitis – which sounds like the smaller, outer moon of a larger gas planet called Colitis, and can produce bloody stool, excessive mucus in the stool, diarrhea, bloating, anti-gravity and solar radiation from the anus. 

4. Crohn’s Disease – which sounds like a form of excusable narcissism attributed to successful Silicon Valley bros while on trial for doing something illegal, for which they cannot be blamed, but is really a specific type of inflammatory bowel disease, whose causes remains unknown. 

5. C-Diff – which sounds like the DJ name of said Silicon Valley bro moonlighting in the early morning hours of San Francisco, but is really a type of bacteria whose formal name I can’t even fucking pronounce, which causes fever and severe diarrhea and is usually found in hospitals, with the prescription to kill this unpronounceable bacteria costing $900 per bottle if you don’t have health insurance or a coupon. 

■■■

It is almost 10PM and I am on the train heading home. I am never out this late, but my GI shrink only had an 8PM appointment at his office downtown. I hate going downtown, it is very stressful. I had previously marked off stops that have bathrooms where I could flee from the Red Line just in case of an emergency— The Target at Loyola. The big Target at Wilson. The new Target at Belmont. The Crate and Barrel at North/Clybourn. Anything south of that, and you’re in it for the duration, as I’m not going anywhere near the bathrooms in McDonalds or Chick-Fil-A on Chicago Avenue. And at this time of night, all of those business are closed or closing. I can’t afford an emergency right now. 

She is mumbling into an old Motorola flip phone but I can’t make her words. We are the only two people on a bright train with unrelenting fluorescent light and black windows thanks to a new moon, the kind of nighttime train ride where all you can see is your reflection— there is no outside world. She has white plastic bags that surround her like a fort and they are full of clothes. All of the bags say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU in capital letters on the side in an ombre of red lettering that fades to white. One of the bags falls on its side to the top of my foot. It feels like a lightweight jacket. She does not notice and she is listening to the person on the other end of the phone. I hear nothing from the device and I wonder if there is another person on the line. It would be just my luck to be sitting next to the only other person on an otherwise empty train talking to themselves. 

Her face is withered and swarthy. Her dark hair is stringy and parted down the middle, salt and pepper. She has crow’s feet for days and reminds me of a wise village elder wearing a men’s bubble coat that covers her hands. My wardrobe is spare and my clothes are comfortable, as recommended on medication labels to help with belly pain—Do not wear tight clothing. They go well with my nebulous body and I suppose to an outsider, we might look like society’s neglected twins. 

I ask her if she has dropped something. She does not reply. She alternates between speaking low into the phone and listening. She is talking so low I don’t recognize the language. I lean forward, take the plastic bag off my foot, and I see a tag attached to a piece of clothing. I guessed correctly that it’s a jacket, Columbia. It looks like it’s for a boy and there are two of them. Maybe they are a gift for her grandchildren? I look at her and she looks like a grandmother. A good, gruff grandma with a temperament that says – I don’t take shit. I love you. 

I sit back and take inventory of her bags. They are all full of clothes. I see department store tags pressed to the plastic as well as a long receipt in one of them. It hits me that she probably does this often. This must be her idea of safety— you can’t mug me if I don’t have fancy Michigan Avenue shopping bags advertising wealth. I hear at Tiffany’s, when you buy something truly expensive, they give you a brown paper bag to put it in, so no one will rob you. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been inside Tiffany’s. Perhaps if we ride together we can both be safe.

It will still be a bit before I depart at Morse. I wonder if she’s going to Howard or perhaps catching the purple line to Evanston. We’ve only just passed Clark/Division. The boxcar feels plastic as it reverberates down the EL tracks, like we’re in a child’s Hot Wheels package being thrown back and forth by sweaty fingers. I can feel it sometimes when the car is nearly empty, that feeling of lightness and the swiftness of making good time— the joy of being ahead of schedule. It is just us and I am grateful. I take comfort in her bags, the softness of them next to me— she is wise to have them. I feel dreamy and snuggle up to her. I hear plastic move. The bags are warm and sac-like. I pretend we are bursae, this lady and I, protecting the joints of a rickety railcar. We are joined and have a job to do. We must prevent rigidity, together. I lay my head on her shoulder and burrow my body into her bags. Together we are safe. 

She shrugs me off with her shoulder, saying nothing while still listening to the phone. She doesn’t move from her seat and neither do I. I put my hands on my knees and breathe deeply, invoking the teachings from my biofeedback exercises. It’s the most powerful exchange I’ve had with another human being in months, maybe years. I am a creep. Would it be even creepier if I said thank you?

■■■

A quick list of only a few things women do better than men:

1. Lead organizations. 

2. Lead anything. 

3. Tolerate pain.

4. Tolerate men.

5. Write song lyrics.

6. Care for the unwell.

■■■

I rent a junior one-bedroom apartment. I have lived in it for twelve years and will probably die in it, sometime in the next thirty years, long after my Social Security runs out. The landlord really likes me. I pay on time, I don’t make any noise and neither does Julie, who the landlord also likes, but would have to accept anyway due to Chicago ESA laws for tenants. Since I can no longer work, I take naps in the daytime, mostly because I have been in the bathroom all night. I get my best rest in the daytime, usually early afternoon, sublime and at peace under my comforter. I am warm and safe from the Chicago spring, which on some days, is still the Chicago winter. I hear mice skip across the hardwood floor in the unit above. It doesn’t bother me as long as I don’t see them. And even if I do, mice are better than rats. I had a rat appear in my en-suite bathroom once. And by appear, I mean ran shit-tailing it across the 1920’s black and white tiles of my bathroom floor while I was sitting there in the middle of an episode. It left little gifts for me (that I would later clean up with yellow dishwashing gloves and a breathing mask), before stopping right in front of my bed. In a moment of bowel reprieve, I stood up from the toilet and made a noise to scare it, which did not work. The rat froze, whiskers forward, while giving me the stink-eye, saying— I am a rat. I’ll be here long after you, as long as I don’t eat from the poisonous black boxes in the alley. So fuck you, human. The rat doesn’t know its lifespan is only 1-2 years, and I’ll continue to suffer for much longer than that. It dashed under my bed to hide and I stayed calm enough to formulate a plan.

■■■

A checklist of things to do late at night when there is a live rat in your bedroom:

1. Stop it from leaving the room. You want to keep it sectioned to where it has already been, which means closing your bedroom door. 

2. Turn on the bedroom lights to scare it. Force it to hide somewhere it feels safe while you secure and blockade all but one of its potential exits. 

3. Make sure you do not kill the rat. Disposing of it would require touching it and you don’t want to go near it. 

4. Figure out how to make it return to whatever access point it came from, so that if you weren’t already completely sure, you can identify the problem and have the landlord deal with it after the rat has exited. 

5. Once you close your bedroom door, open the door to the bathroom and turn the lights off.

6. Grab a stick or a mop or something long enough to scare it and cause movement. 

7. Once it is scared and scurries back to the hole by the radiator in the bathroom from which it came, cover the hole with as many old clothes and fire-ready detritus as possible, so that even if the radiator gets hot enough to ignite and your apartment explodes, at least the rat will not come back.

8. Disinfect everything. 

9. Return to your bed hours later and not sleep. 

■■■

Julie, who is supposed to love and protect me, slept on the couch in the front room through the whole thing. Apparently, she only likes to hunt animals when they are outdoors. No treat for you, Julie.

■■■

I am waiting at the front desk to pick up Julie from the Vet. It’s a newer office that has just opened in the neighborhood, sandwiched between a Poke restaurant and a Dunkin’ Donuts, in a building that has mural-covered walls in the alley marking its gentrification. Moments earlier, I was chastised by the Vet. 

“Oh Mr. – , you’re Julie’s dad,” said the Vet. 

“Yes, I am.”

There were no handshakes, no nods of encouragement, not even a fake smile. I got up from my seat in the waiting area, which only has two chairs, and stood with my hands clasped together in front of me. The Vet stood with her arms crossed, a stethoscope around her neck. 

“We need to talk,” she said. 

I could tell there was going to be a reprimand, her delivery the same as when a parent says those exact words. 

“It’s about Julie. I ran her tests and everything is normal, but she is obese. Normally, I don’t like using that word, but she needs more exercise and you have got to stop with the treats. Do you feed her a lot from the table?”

No. Julie doesn’t care for my soups-in-the-can from Walgreens, I thought to myself. 

“She’s currently sixty-five pounds. Her target weight is sixty pounds. That’s too big. She needs more exercise, and you have got to stop feeding her people-food, or she’ll die, K?” 

The Vet left and made her way to another door to tend to another animal, leaving me to wallow in my supposed shame, which only made me angry.

■■■

A quick list of things I don’t get to retort because the Vet clearly had to have the last word:

1. Julie only gets two meals a day and goes for walks twice a day. 

2. She very rarely gets human food and has limited snacks. 

3. She has never had an accident in the apartment. We are at one hundred percent on that tally since I brought her home four years ago. 

4. My dog is not fucking fat and fuck you Vet for saying that. 

5. I took three slugs off a bottle of Immodium this morning to put up with this shit? 

■■■

Julie comes out and the pooch is pissed. She wants to go home but I have to pay the bill first. She puts all her weight to one side and pulls. I pull back and the leash is a tightrope. I tell her “no pull.” I want her closer to me and her nails are extended, begging for grip on the tile floor in the waiting area. I’m not going back in there, creep she says with her eyes. I break off a piece of dried fish skin to give her as a treat. She comes over and sniffs the treat before taking it in her mouth and dropping it on the floor, only to resume pulling me towards the door. I don’t budge and neither does she. The lady at the front desk tells me I owe eleven hundred dollars for the teeth cleaning, anesthesia, stool tests, overall check-up and the year’s supply of medicine she gets for heart and tick protection.

“You’re expensive,” I say to Julie. I hand over my credit card and she is still pulling me towards the exit. It’s a good thing I am on disability and mostly eat cans of soup.                                      

■■■

I have acquired a slight limp. This is what happens when you smash your toe into the undercarriage of your bed at 2:30 in the morning because the lightning strikes in your bowels force you from sleep as you hurriedly jump to the john. The kind of emergency where covering the minimal square footage from your bedroom to the bathroom is barely makeable. What does it feel like inside? Like when the yolk from a fried egg breaks and rushes around the inside of a sizzling skillet.  

I suffer through the session, eating lots of pink Bismuth, the one with the funny commercials and jingles, which is banned in France due to the possibility of heavy metal toxicity and brain disease. I don’t care about eating metal. I’ll eat a factory’s worth if it stops the sessions of intense belly pain that routinely happen to me. Sometimes when I sit there, rocking back and forth in pain, I equate my symptoms to what having strong menstrual pain must feel like. Or how the Earth feels when a tectonic plate slips and a seismic wave rips through igneous rock. But I must correct myself, realizing I am not a woman, or a planet, and I have no idea what menstrual pain, or giving birth, will ever feel like. Or what having a seismic ripple go through my rocky body will ever feel like, and that I do not have the authority to compare.

Once the waves quiet down, I am able to shuffle into bed and put myself down for a restless sleep. I take a pillow to prop up my left foot, the littlest toe throbbing in pain. I manage a few anxiety-riddled dreams and wake up to morning light. When I look at my raised foot, the toe is swollen, multi-colored and painful with purple, burgundy and red colors making parallel lines in my skin like a Rothko painting— an entire art movement summed up in my left pinky toe. 

It is morning and Julie must be walked. Her butt is facing me with her nose glued to the door— let’s go, fatass she says with her wagging tail. She holds it in all night and never whines, which makes me love her even more, but when it is time to go, she lets me know, as she is doing now. 

“Just give me a minute,” I say out loud. 

Walking is not impossible, just painful. I plant with my right foot and walk on the heel of my left foot, pointing upwards, like I just had my toenails painted at the salon and I’m waiting for them to dry. I have to make sure I have poopy bags, keys, cell phone, and because it is slightly drizzling, an umbrella. I have no idea how I am going to pull this off with only two hands, and some kind of newspaper cartoon with a character holding too many things enters my mind with the caption— It never ends well. 

My toe is so swollen that none of my sneakers will accommodate it comfortably. This is the time when having friends would be nice. I could call one and they would come over and walk Julie for me, while I keep my foot raised on the couch. But to have friends one has to be social, and usually employed, two boxes I fail to check. I imagine having friends who would invite me to outdoor gatherings like in those pharmaceutical commercials, with their healthy smiles and adventurous lifestyles that involve a multi-hour car ride somewhere in the mountains or by the sea, places that might not have bathrooms readily accessible, which mean that lifestyle is not a possibility for someone like myself. Even my imagination excludes me. 

I put on enough cotton socks to make a fortress around my toes, buffering any possible shock to them. The socks will be dirty and soaking wet when I get back, but they are old enough to be discarded, no need to be cleaned. I decide to tuck my jeans into the elastic of my socks so they do not interfere with my athletic-sock-cast. I put on my floor-length, pea-colored raincoat from my commuting days and do a quick check of my pockets like we are heading out for a great quest, one from which we might not return.  

“We’re going for a short one, girl,” I say to Julie. I attach the leash to her collar and wrap the rope several times around my wrist. Julie hates the rain almost more than I do. It’s not until we are at the building door that she realizes it’s wet and wants to turn back. 

“Oh no, we are committed,” I say. “We can’t go back now or I’ll never get it together again.” 

Once outside, my gait is struggling. My balance is woozy and I realize too late that Julie has her squeaky ball in her mouth and she is not allowed to take her toys outside, especially when the weather is dismal. We start walking on the sidewalk and she is unhappy. She drops her ball and I have to bend down to pick it up, which in my current state, takes a ballerina maneuver to accomplish. I am not a ballerina. And because I cannot balance on one foot and bend down without putting pressure on the other, I go down to one knee, marriage-proposal style on wet concrete to retrieve her ball while she is tied close to me and I am holding a giant umbrella. Getting up takes another feat and is somehow achieved. I put her ball in my pocket and continue my Chaplin-esque penguin walk towards the park.   

Julie finds her favorite tree, the big oak tree, to do her business. The bark on the tree is old and has a crisscross pattern like a cable-knit sweater. There is a hole dug out at the base big enough for a raccoon or some other infected animal to ingress and egress whenever it pleases. It’s not until I take the poop bag out of my raincoat that her squeaky ball simultaneously comes flying out and into the hole of the tree. My eyes go to the dark-clouded heavens and my body takes a Charlie-Brown-dejected posture.

“Well you lost your ball, are you happy now?” I say to Julie. 

I didn’t lose my ball, you did, dumbfuck, she says with her muzzle and solicitous brown eyes staring up at me. Her wet nose goes to the hole but she can’t reach the ball with her mouth. She looks back at me and starts making the crying sounds she knows I’m a sucker for.

“I am not going in there right now. I’ll get it for you tomorrow, when the weather is better, OK?”

She yelps and already misses her toy like it’s her first-born who is missing. I look down at Julie. She will not accept anything less than me sticking my hand in the hole and getting her ball this very instant. She knows I can’t stand doggy cries—they cut right through me. She knows I’m a victim for her manipulation. I untie the belt loop at my waist and unbutton my raincoat, just like she always knew I would. 

“I can’t believe you are making me do this,” I say to her. 

She instantly becomes excited. Her tail wags with apprehension to watch me embarrass myself. She knows how to play with my emotions and get exactly what she wants. So this is what it’s like to be in a relationship? 

I bend down and my already wet knees sink slightly into the mud. I crouch underneath the extended branches to peek into the hole, making sure there is nothing inside that can bite me. I stick my hand inside and feel around. My fingertips hit the ball and knock it further away. I pull my hand out and scrunch up my sleeve. Once I am inside up to my elbow, I am fisting the tree looking for her ball. I touch the ball and am able to grab it, bringing it free. I have fire on one side of my cheek. I must’ve scraped my face against a branch and feel broken skin when I rub the backside of my hand against my face. I wipe my brow, not caring about the dirt smear it leaves. I sit patiently on a tree root to gather myself. It is thick like a parking curb that has risen above the ground and is perfectly comfortable. I am winded from all the exertion. Julie comes over to take her ball from my hand but I quickly pull it back. 

“Oh no, you are not getting this until we get home and we are both cleaned up,” I say.

I put the ball back in my voluminous coat and sit under the tree for a few minutes where it is dry. 

A white woman and man approach. They are jogging along the shimmering path of faded blacktop. I see them to my left making breathy small talk while keeping a steady pace, their sneakers kick up sticky fountains of water as each foot rises from the pavement. Julie notices their approach and barks excitedly, her tail wagging. She is ready to make new friends. The joggers are both wearing pink headbands and matching black athletic tights that stop at the knee, with pink shorts over them and pink tee shirts the color of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail with a pink scrunchie—his hair is held back by a pink hair clip. They must be besties. And the rainbow tattoo on the side of his calf tells me he is her gay bestie. He looks doughy and young, with moppish brown hair. His dad-bod is beyond his years, but it is an improvement over my non-bod.

They see me underneath the canopy of a low-hanging branch. They are getting ready to pass in front of me, their breathy talk quitted as soon as they discover the goblin in a raincoat (me) as the only other person in the park. I should say hello— maybe I will gain friends? Put my hand out for a shake as an intro. Julie can help out and be my icebreaker. Isn’t this how humans meet? My inner voice has a moment. Hey! Hey gay guy! I’m right here! Please notice me! I’m a member too! We could hook up and have sex. Isn’t that what gay men are supposed to do? Say hello and then do each other? I will deify five seconds of an overt sexual stare if he looks my way. 

“Eww, homeless,” the gay bestie says. 

Their pace hastens as soon as I am recognized as something undesirable. I analyze them as they have analyzed me. I can be judgey, too. In fact, that’s probably the best time to presuppose someone—when you’re stuck in your head and when society ignores you. Let them think I am unstable, without a home.  Let them think I am homicidal. Suicidal. Genocidal. Let them think I am sexless, my parts covered in warts, bumpy like a pickle. 

“I can have sex!” I yell at their backs. 

The joggers are horrified. Their jog becomes a run and I watch them get smaller. I ruined their peace. Good. Maybe gay bestie and I shouldn’t have sex. Maybe he has a specific rule not to have sex with men in oversized raincoats. And maybe I have discovered that being ignored by men and by other humans in general is what actually makes me a part of the human race.

Julie whines and wants to go home. I make myself get up and hobble/walk onto the path that will take us home. Julie knows I am labored and walks slowly with me, not pulling once, which is rare for her. She judges me silently, like any confidante would, and I think she deserves a few extra milkbones when we get home. I don’t mind having a dog as a partner. 

■■■

A list of commercials Julie and I see that feed the bullshit fantasy that I too can one day achieve Pharmaceutical Bliss:

1. The one where the young man is in his pajamas all day staring at a TV screen. It is a dark and cloudy day when his dog comes up to lick his face and then – cue prescription banner— the young man is no longer sad, but full of vigor and playing frisbee with his dog on a sunny day while being noticed by a group of young girls. 

2. The one where a middle-aged woman is having a fabulous time hanging party lights outdoors because her skin disease is in remission, and is then seen line-dancing at night with a man in a cowboy hat, so pleased to finally have a date – cue prescription banner. 

3. The one where overweight people do yoga in a park and run around cones highlighting their new, healthy lifestyle, then eat a boring salad and give each other high fives – cue prescription banner.

4. The one where the young couple is at their in-laws during a big holiday dinner and are miraculously saved by a prescription banner. 

5. The one where all you see is a prescription banner. 

6. Prescription banner.

7. The one where everyone is happy.

Randy Romano received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, and received his BA in English from Queens College/CUNY. He has been a Writer-in-Residence at Ragdale and his fiction has most recently appeared in Armstrong Literary. He currently lives in Chicago and serves on the board of the Stories Matter Foundation at StoryStudio Chicago. 

Visual Art
Trent Christensen is an artist whose work spans painting and drawing, deeply influenced by folk, outsider, and naive art. His pieces explore themes of religion, masculinity, mysticism, and humanity's role in the modern world. Often inspired by interpersonal and visual stimuli, his work begins as small, raw doodles in sketchbooks, reflecting quick reactions to his surroundings. These initial sketches evolve into larger compositions, abstracted and reimagined until they capture the essence of those fleeting moments in a highly patterned, expressive aesthetic.


♡♡♡


Support Blanket Gravity

You can donate here to support future issues. Subscribe to our Substack to make a monthly or annual contribution. Thanks so much for your support.

Our online magazine offers literature and art with a focus on mental health or emotional life, always free to read for everyone.