Even Greater Mistakes

by Charlie Jane Anders

Well, if you want me to tell you your plays are very good, then that will count as one of your three wishes.

“Well, if you think of theatre as some sort of delicate flower that needs to be kept protected in some sort of hothouse”—and at this point, Wolf was clearly reprising arguments he’d had over and over again when he was alive—“then you’re going to end up with something that only the faithful few will appreciate, and you’ll end up worsening the very marginalization that you’re seeking to prevent.”

Doug throws his favorite porcelain bust of Wonder Woman on the floor. Wonder Woman’s head breaks into two jagged pieces, cleaving her magic tiara in half. This image, of the Amazon’s raggedly bisected head, has always been in Doug’s mind, whenever he’s looked at the intact bust.

Doug turns and looks into Judy’s face, which the bridge lights have turned yellow. “I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.” Doug realizes he’s inadvertently quoted Phil Collins. First he’s mortified, then he starts laughing like a maniac. For the next half hour, Doug and Judy speak only in Phil Collins quotes.

She’s never been a sadist before now—although it’s also masochism, because when she torments him, she already knows how terrible she’ll feel in a few minutes.

“No food can I taste, my course corrections go awry. I falter in everything, dreaming of your touch. O Mabirelle! Your Dot will die without you.” In other words: “Woman to me, or I’ll send the City a fraction off course, and we’ll all die in starless space.” And that’s supposed to be romantic!

I’d thought y and I would always share everything, until the City launched and y fell in love for the first time, with an outringer. Ever since then, it was one crush after another, putting Idra in an elliptical orbit away from me, and then back to me when it fell apart. I’d mostly gotten used to it.

“Major Tom would actually be a legit good name for an astronaut cat.”

I always tried to remind her about that old saying, that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, because what could be more romantic than a school of fish, perched on bikes at the bottom of the ocean, pedaling like wild with all their fins?

Sometimes I stared into the waves for hours, trying to hear the sound waves trapped in them, but then I started to feel like maybe the ocean had told me everything it was ever going to. The ocean always sang the same notes, it always passed over the same streets and came back with the same sad laughter. Staring down at the ocean only reminded me of how we’d thought we could help to heal her, with our enzyme treatments, a little at a time. I couldn’t see why I had ever believed in that fairy tale. The ocean was going to heal on her own, sooner or later, but in the meantime we were just giving her meaningless therapy that made us feel better more than it actually helped.

He and the Ex had broken up six months ago, but neither of them could afford to move out, and they were almost better at ignoring each other than they’d been at loving each other.

“What does that mean, ‘death drive’?” The Ex shrugged. “Freudian bullshit. We seek out painful experiences on purpose, so we can numb ourselves, because what we actually want is to return to nothingness.” Brady had a mental image of his hand coming up out of a hanging chair, like a horror movie. “People seek out pain because they’re stupid, though.” That was the thing Brady had left art school understanding: people make complicated pieces of art to explain human behavior, when the real explanation is almost always assholishness.

Transplant list so long, his name was on the elbow of the person holding the paper. Basically screwed. He read on the internet about people getting drugged and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with their liver missing, but Brady had no clue where to get that much ice, or a big enough tub.

Sometimes you get crushed by a fear so all-encompassing, the only thing you can do is write it down and share it with the world. Back in January 2017, I couldn’t sleep. We were a couple weeks away from the inauguration of our forty-fifth president, and I was having nightmares and panic attacks about surviving as a trans person in this new era. I decided to channel all my anxiety, rage, and nausea into a story that would give voice to my worst fears about my body becoming illegal—I couldn’t work on anything else until I finished writing.

Before you feel too sorry for Rachel, however, you should be aware that she’s a person who holds a great many controversial views. For example, she once claimed to disapprove of hot chocolate, because she believes that chocolate is better at room temperature, or better yet as a component of ice cream or some other frozen dessert. In addition, Rachel considers ZZ Top an underappreciated music group, supports karaoke only in an alcohol-free environment, dislikes puppies, enjoys brussels sprouts, and rides a bicycle with no helmet. She claims to prefer the Star Wars prequels to the Disney Star Wars films. Is Rachel a contrarian, a freethinker, or just kind of an asshole?