Wow, No Thank You.

by Samantha Irby

I remember one snowy day I was driving to work, and I used to live on top of the fucking lake, because in Chicago it was possible to get an apartment on the beach for cheap if you really lowered your expectations for what the words “beachside living” can mean, and this person (midwestern winters render everyone genderless; in the month of January, we are just amorphous shapeshifting piles of down filling and wool) was waiting for their dog to poop in horizontally blowing ice spittle while struggling to remain upright against the biting wind as icy waves crashed onto the frozen sand behind them, the tattered end of the blue newspaper wrapper clutched in their mitten barely visible through the storm. I sat at the stoplight where Sheridan Road curves and turns into Evanston, fingertips pressed to the heat vent from which a whisper of anemic warm air trickled out, and chuckled softly to myself. “Man, fuck dogs.”