Play Nice

by Rachel Harrison

That’s all he is to me, body heat.

I’d rather you girls open your legs before you ever open your hearts,

To say my parents did not have an amicable divorce would be like saying the Challenger did not have a pleasant flight.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time pawing around my memory. A childhood like mine doesn’t exactly invite reminiscing. But sometimes it eats at me. Wondering what memories are beyond retrieval, are totally lost. Wondering what hides in the haze.

But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game.

Men are all the same, Mom once told us, but it’s the ones who try the hardest to convince you that they’re good that you really have to watch out for.

I get to take the setting of the worst time in my family history and transform it into something else. Make it unrecognizable as the place where Mom lost her mind, the place where she died, the place where her demons lived. It’s the next best thing to burning it to the ground.

But I love men. I just don’t trust or respect them.

I eventually retaliated by feigning independence, which then calcified into legitimate independence.

Conveniently, she left this out of the book. Or maybe what’s written is faithful to her recollection, to how it played out in her mind. One person’s truth is another’s fiction.

There was a malevolent energy in the kitchen with us, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind that exists in every house, in every family, in all of us on our worst nights. Mom surrendered to it, to her worst, and couldn’t take responsibility.

The world will drive a woman insane, then point at them and laugh.

There’s a direct correlation between men who wear designer sweatpants and men who can’t make me come. I’ve done the unfortunate research.

But it wasn’t trying to hide this time. It made no attempt to conceal itself, to sneak. It was glad that I knew. It wanted me to know it was there. Because it understood something, something that I did not. No one would believe me.

Alcohol was never my problem. It was a response to my problems.

I missed someone who didn’t exist. An empathetic partner who would take care of me, listen, understand, believe.

Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.

It just makes me wonder about belief and delusion. What’s the difference there, really? Maybe delusion is an eagerness to believe. A desperation for it.

Some people jump out of airplanes, some people backpack alone across Europe, some people climb Mount Everest, some people swim with sharks, some people fuck hot strangers they meet on the street, some people do heroin, chase a high because they know what it’s worth, despite the danger. And some people sit around thinking, I would never.

I resent him for not being able to keep this casual.

I wish I could bottle it—his scent right now—and the way it feels to be held when I’m afraid.

What does he want me to say? Does he expect me to apologize? Everyone in my life wants me to behave in a very specific way that’s beneficial to them, and as soon as I deviate from their expectations, it’s an issue. As soon as I act out of whatever role they cast me in in their lives, it’s somehow my fault.

Maybe the devil lives somewhere in the words “I know I shouldn’t.” Or maybe God does.

Remembering is not always a light shone into darkness. Sometimes it’s a claw reaching out and dragging you back.