The Pisces

by Melissa Broder

I didn’t want to be seen too closely or I might have to look at me too.

“Fuck me,” I said to the palm trees.

It was as though some wonderful future event were being extended backward in time. The future event needed only to exist so that I could have this excitement and anticipation now.

But if you were ever actually satisfied it wouldn’t be satisfaction. You would just get hungry for something else. The only way to maybe have satisfaction would be to accept the nothingness and not try to put anyone else in it.

To want what you had—now, that was an art, a gift maybe.

What if everything was natural? What if there was no wrong or right action in terms of who you loved, who you wanted, or who you were drawn to? If the will of the universe was the will of the universe, and if everything was happening as it was, then wasn’t everything you could possibly do all right?

What a pussy, I thought. But was he a pussy?