Late Bloomer

by Mazey Eddings

I feel, to put it delicately, like a dickhead. And said dickhead feeling is becoming far too familiar. Comfortable, even. Like rewearing the same pair of sweatpants for six days straight without washing them because if I don’t leave my couch during that time, do they actually get dirty? (Yes, I know they do. Yes, I am mentally ill, thanks for asking.)

It sometimes feels like a curse to be attracted to men, seeing as I don’t generally like them. Now, women? I love women. They are creatures I genuinely want to talk to and also kindly ask to sit on my face.

I get that—the raw frustration of giving as much of yourself to others as you can in the hopes they accept you. Want you. Death by one thousand naive cuts.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Opal rushes out. “I imagine now isn’t the right time for elf semantics.”

How am I supposed to be assertive when what I’d rather do is kindly ask this beautiful woman to choke me with those endlessly long legs?

Despite summer being in full swing and the humidity at purgatory levels, I have a beanie shoved low around my ears as I hover awkwardly on the outskirts of the party. It doesn’t really do me any favors that the hat has SLUT with a Shrek “S” embroidered on it, but at this point I’m picking and choosing my battles.

It’s like some amorphous, blobby creature is plopped on top of my brain after the first sip, growing and snuggling between the lobes and dimming the stimuli around me, making the world a little less sharp and the people a little less scary. Like I can’t be hurt if I give the bacchanalian beast enough.

“You’re being very 2011 emo sulking in the corner with your beanie pulled low,” Ophelia says, leaning against the wall next to me, Olivia hovering in front of us with a fresh drink. “Yeah, well … I peaked in my Tumblr era, what can I say?” “Something a little less sad, maybe?” Olivia says with a shrug.

“More of a disaster than living on a property that North Carolina courts have apparently decided belongs to your mother who in turn sold it to a pink-haired pixie who wants to turn it into a shoe mill?”

“This silence is, quite possibly, the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Including the time a stranger on the bus licked my neck,”

And that look of hers, one of divine reverence, delicious devastation, as she pleasures herself while pleasing me, tips my world upside down.

I didn’t sleep at all, staring up at the ceiling, ears pricked for the tiniest squeak of a sound in the cabin, some desperate knot of hope that maybe Pepper couldn’t sleep either. That maybe she was kept up thinking of me. Of what we’d done. Bitch apparently slept like a rock.

“It’s honestly such a power move to raw dog the mail system like that. Put it all out there with nary an envelope to protect your horniest thoughts.” “You’re extremely weird,” I blurt out. I realize this is probably a bit harsh, but it’s also true.

But like with everything else in my life, I overreacted. I latched onto an idea like a raccoon digging through trash and became rabid when even the smallest thing challenged it. And now I’m sitting here with fucked bangs and swollen eyes from crying in frustration all night, hating everything.

“I don’t think anyone will get it,” I counter. We’ve been harping on this for a solid fifteen minutes. “You really think people wouldn’t get a life-sized rendering of Jeff motherfucking Goldblum?” “What does he have to do with love?” “The man is a sex symbol!” I bury my head in my hands. “It’s not happening, Opal.”

But I feel … content. Comfortable. Understood by the peculiar woman who’s choosing to wrap herself around me. I’m filled with a hope that maybe she’ll want to stay there.

Fuck anything and anyone that made you have to survive instead of live. You deserve a life so peaceful it feels deliciously boring. A life filled with flowers and sunny days and people who show you all the time that you’re valued and worthy. You deserve it all.”

“Me telling you it’s time to get up is not a hate crime,”

lark...

“Hunger takes me to a dark place.” “Yeah, no shit. I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t get a full meal in you in the next ten minutes.” “I’ll make my final metamorphosis into a cuntosaurus rex and pillage this lovely hotel.” I hold up my limp wrists in front of me, making a roaring sound.

“Her poems spoke softly—as intimately as confessions between lovers—about the terrible, wonderful ache of being in love.”

But the silence between us is so vast, growing and growing and, holy hell, growing some more. It’s become its own presence, a large blob of a being pressing into the room, squeezing through every crack and doorway and landing on my shoulders, wrapping around my throat so no words can come out.

My Google Doc draft went through some really stellar placeholder titles after that, including GAY, GAYY BOOK, PEPPER + OPAL 5EVA … For some reason, none of these were deemed particularly marketable.