The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

THE RECEPTIONIST XEROXED MY INSURANCE card while explaining that chromotherapy isn’t covered by insurance.

But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating—like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really trusted, someone who knew how capable and good you actually were. After

My days become dreamlike, no edges anywhere, none of the snags and snafus that life is so famous for. After days and days alone it gets silky to the point where I can’t even feel myself anymore, it’s as if I don’t exist.

She was much older than she’d been when she was fourteen.

“Give me a hint.” “A hint. Let’s see . . . actually, I can’t. There are no little parts to it, it’s all big.”

Whereas girls in my youth felt angry but directed it inward and cut themselves and became depressed, girls nowadays just went arrrrgh and pushed someone into a wall. Who could say which way was better? In the past the girl herself got hurt; now another unsuspecting, innocent person was hurt and the girl herself seemed to feel just fine. In terms of fairness maybe the past was a better time.

Fear was for poor people. Maybe this was the happiest I’d ever been.

But it couldn’t be helped. We had a good run, me and me. I imagined shooting an old dog, an old faithful dog, because that’s what I was to myself. Go on, boy, get. I watched myself dutifully trot ahead. Then I lowered my rifle and what actually happened was I began to have a bowel movement. It was unplanned, but once begun it was best to finish.

I had added meaningful layers to things that were meaningless many, many times before.

“I’m definitely on the side of life,” I said, meaning not that I was pro-life, just that I was one of life’s fans.

It’s just false stupidity. She’s doing it so she can feel like a trashy Christian girl, like Kate, like all of them.”

See, this is what we do, I began, we exist in time. That’s what living is; you’re doing it right now as much as anyone.

Try not to base your decision on this room, it isn’t representative of the whole world. Somewhere the sun is hot on a rubbery leaf, clouds are making shapes and reshaping and reshaping, a spiderweb is broken but still works.

You know what? Forget what I just said. You’re already a part of this. You will eat, you will laugh at stupid things, you will stay up all night just to see what it feels like, you will fall painfully in love, you will have babies of your own, you will doubt and regret and yearn and keep a secret. You will get old and decrepit, and you will die, exhausted from all that living. That is when you get

Each word he said was boring, but collectively the melody of them lulled me.