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TO ALL THE UNCIVIL WOMEN WHO DON’T TAKE SHIT FROM SHITTY MEN
“That question, right there . . .” She clucks her tongue. “That is a tricky bitch, that question. What I want, what I want, whoo. Yeah. I want what every woman wants. Respect. Peace on Earth. Equality and justice. I want for nobody to give a shit that I don’t shave my armpits. For good men to carry me around on a palanquin made of the bones of bad men. Mostly, I just wanna be left alone. To find somewhere at the ends of the Earth where I can go sit, be it a beach or a mountain, and stare out upon the horizon, where no one will bother me. Though, if we’re being honest, really honest,
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Well, creating life is a stupid shitshow, she decides. It is less a harmonic convergence of angels singing and more a tired, insane Dr. Frankenstein furiously cobbling ill-fitting body parts together in a fireworks show of lightning and hiccups and heartburn.
The universe is unjust. It is unfair as fuck. There exists no cosmic balancing force, no great ledger where all the debts and credits are neatly squared, no scale in the hands of a blind lady.
She sits, orders coffee and a big plate of bacon and eggs, and eats like they just made breakfast illegal.
Black hair mussed up, but in a purposeful way—like someone who likes chaos only when it’s controlled.
“Then my answer is Double-No with a side order of Nope-Nuh-Uh and a couple sauce packets of Extra-Zesty Fuck-No Dressing.”
My soul’s got bills to pay; I know that. And if there is an afterlife, I expect I’ll be servicing that debt till the Devil’s asshole is raw from all the rimjobs I will have to give him.
Miriam sees herself as a take-no-shit, give-no-fucks kinda lady. She’s all sneer and middle fingers.
Lies are like lockpicks. A deft practitioner can use them to gently open a door and sneak through. Truth opens the door too, but it does so with the force of a rampaging bull.
They fuck like the last two bunnies on Earth. And that is a very specific kind of coitus.
“We like what we like, baby. Don’t yuck my yum.”
She despises the word horny; it’s like a fourteen-year-old’s clumsy idea of what sex is like. And that one word is not enough, anyway. She doesn’t get horny: she gets greedy and desirous, ecstatic and consumptive, feral and fuck-hungry.
“It tastes like coffee smells,” she says. “I make a good cup,” Guerrero says. “I want to fuck this coffee.” “You should probably let it cool down first.” “Fair point.”
Miriam stops for a moment by the Range Rover and looks at herself in the passenger-side mirror. Predictably, she looks like roadkill. She has a zombie-like vibe going on: she’s pale, crusted with blood, her shirt filthy, her clothes ragged. The swell of her pregnant belly only adds to the ghoulish veneer: preggo zombie lady here, don’t worry, she’s eating for two now!
inside is something best described as modern yet rustic, or rustic yet modern. Like somebody made a barn and a skyscraper fuck and have a house-baby.
The floor is the opposite: pale, unfinished oak, blonder than a Nazi girl eating a sugar cookie.
because people around here can’t just drink a shot of tequila or put some tonic in some gin and call it a fucking day. No, here they drink, like, weird shit some fey mustachioed lad made up: It’s got three bitter liquors you’ve never heard of, plus barrel-aged suntan lotion, saffron, muddled sumac, roasted celery, and the fermented semen of a Tibetan yak who was manually masturbated as he died from a slow bleed with a sacred knife.
in walks Julie Anaya. She’s got a latte. She doesn’t do Guerrero’s “pour-over” nonsense, she said; she likes steamed milk and espresso. Miriam did her old line then: I like my coffee like I like my men, hot, black, and coming down my throat,
Time passes, as it must. As it wants. For time knows no other desire than to move ineluctably forward,
He smells strongly like an autumnal pinecone. Cinnamon and clove. Like he’s just come from an orgy with Father Christmas and Pumpkin Spice. Was Pumpkin Spice a Spice Girl? Miriam can’t remember. She should’ve been, at any rate.
The truck is a piece-of-shit 1997 white Datsun, though it’s more red rust and spattered mud than white paint anymore.
Evil people want you to be nice, because when you’re nice, it’s nearly impossible to point out the evil that they’re doing. Fuck nice. Be more like Miriam. Speak truth to power, with as many nasty words as you can muster.
