I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

Define loneliness? Yes. It’s what we can’t do for each other. CLAUDIA RANKINE

What I mean is, it never once occurred to me that you, too, were mortal.

As I got older and gayer, I heard a lot of talk about chosen family, but I didn’t understand why something so beautiful had to be compared to family. Why couldn’t it just be its own good thing?

We is the longest word I know.

I disliked the word troubled, but that was the word the school assigned to any student with a lick of personality.

A bumblebee buzzes past the mailwoman’s face. I, too, would be fearless if I had an exoskeleton. Tomorrow, I decide, will be better. Tomorrow, I will recover from today.

◼ I never feel like I know how to live in the world. Only on top of it, hanging on as it spins madly.

A photo of Colestein, handsome, rugged in all the right places, yet delicate around his trust-me gray eyes. Above his head, it says, “Help us keep the balance for a safer and better nation.” “Only fools trust good looks,” I say, holding up the photo. “He looks like he keeps someone tied up in his basement,” she whispers.

Things didn’t work out with her for the same reason things never do: she felt like a distraction from my life, instead of a part of it.

Pop Quiz: Q: Can you name an emotion other than lonely? A:

You were able to shed those feelings within a few days once the freshness wore off. But me, I’m simple—things designed to manipulate me tend to succeed.

But it turns out, human beings can grow used to just about anything if given the opportunity, and lucky us, we were given the opportunity to grow used to the blinking cameras in every room, to let it all hang loose in the bathroom, to make sex tapes we’d never get to see.

She reminds me of the people who used to say, Have you tried a mindcast? whenever my temper got the best of me. They were the same people who thought that everyone’s horrific circumstances were a direct result of their behaviors, that you could manifest a better life, if only you’d try harder, you lazy piece of shit.

Pop Quiz: Q: What is worth more: a human life or physical property? A: Say what you really mean. Q: I’m the one who demands things around here. A: Which human life?

The troubled kids, they knew what was up well before I did. They knew that evidence-based was nothing more than a formal way of saying, Despite not knowing you, we will fix you.

I would have already ordered dozens of Shadester children’s books, but I don’t know where to find them—the Department is a big fan of censorship, only they don’t call it that. They call it strategic stabilization.

Pop Quiz: Q: Can there be healing without forgiveness? A: This is an out-of-office reply. Check back later.

I crawled into bed, wrapped my arms around you, and sobbed into your back. I felt your jaw pull into a smile. I think you were happy that I was mourning. You’d wanted confirmation that we were in this together. It was a fucked-up thing.

Who is he? I wonder. What does he care about? What makes him cry? How does he process his pain, if at all? Who does he want to be? All I know is, as a kid, the only thing that helped me sleep was the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and it was my dad who stayed up until all hours vacuuming my room and the hallway outside.

“That’s because you want to know you’re not alone in your grief. Perfectly normal,” she says, jotting things down, perhaps writing “Perfectly Normal” under my name. I don’t see her again because she made a good point, and I wasn’t there for the good points.

I was torn between wanting to give the man a hug and wanting to steer clear of him forever. I guess the two desires stemmed from the same feeling—pity. You could practically see the soundproof closet around him.

Pop Quiz: True or False 1. You need more than any one person can reasonably give. ____

Pop Quiz: Q: Is it smart to categorize people as either good or bad? A: Of course it isn’t.

Pop Quiz: Q: How do you know if you’re a good person? A: The less you worry about it, the more likely you are one. A: I am worrying about it.

More about octopuses: they can taste a person’s body chemistry through their skin. I cannot imagine having to taste everyone’s depression and anxiety.

Pop Quiz: Q: What would you tell your younger self if you could? A: The future is a place you can never catch up to.

Pop Quiz: Q: What is the difference between nice and kind? A: Only one is a result of fear.

The way he says baby makes me want to kiss him in that way good news makes you want to kiss the deliverer of that good news. I know what you’re thinking, Beau, and it’s not like that. The desire to kiss him has little to do with attraction and everything to do with recognition—in him, I see the soft ache of shared suffering, an incurable longing to go back in time and shield his baby sister from any and all threats. A kiss would mean I see you.

The kid has developed a keen sense of observation, even for a three-and-a-half-year-old, and she uses this gift at the most inopportune moments. Everywhere I take her, she studies people and then imitates their mannerisms back to me, or worse, directly to them. The kid, it appears, is making sure no one will ever say hello to me again. How will I ever repay her?

Pop Quiz: Q: What does it mean to harm someone? A: Define someone.

Had she been paying attention, she would have known it hadn’t happened overnight, that it took a million tiny stabs to bleed democracy dry.

Pop Quiz: Fill in the blanks: Many people in the United States find it ____ to ____ about _____ until it _____ to them.

“What do you mean?” I am appalled by her wisdom.

I don’t want to be one of those delusional parents who promises their child that they can do anything they set their mind to—I know the state of the world, how by the time the kid is a teen, the world will have swallowed her and spit her out several times already, but I also know change is possible. I’m not sure how, but history has proved it so. I just need to hold on and trust that the words I’m saying to the kid are dipped in more truth than fallacy.

I worry I will lose it all at any moment, but I keep my exoskeletons to myself.

“Pretending to be happy for someone you love is a key life skill,” I lecture.

“I worry about her,” I say. “She has the influential skills of a dictator and the organizational skills of a wedding planner. A terrifying combination.”

Pop Quiz: Q: What is the story you’ve told yourself about yourself? A: That I’m not a capable person. Q: Have you ever considered taking a red pen to your life?

True or False (½ point each): 1. Not deciding is deciding, too. _____ 2. You can feel the tectonic plates of your world shifting beneath you. _____ 3. Love is not a finite thing. _____ 4. Your story was never just your story. _____ 5. Pleasure can exist on its own, without the intrusion of shame. _____ 6. You were right: remembering is a courageous act. _____ 7. It’s time to tip the scales. _____ 8. It is possible for an answer to be both true and false at once. _____