Set during F*cksgiving. I found myself overwhelmed with pride when Piper stood up for herself. I thought I would try to capture it. Nothing explicit, but a few F bombs dropped. I would love feedback!
Fuck that was stupid. Stupid fucking stupid. Healy's footsteps were drowned out by shouts and screams, but I know that they would have echoed down that hallway. I know his boots clicked on the cement like a fucking tap chorus of tea partiers. Fuck fuck fuck. I rubbed my head against the wall. I would bet money that every centimeter of this room has been soaked in urine at some point in time, but it wasn't worth moving. I used to play a game on the street. I would ask Larry if he thought someone had ever peed right where we were standing. I'm pretty sure that something has pissed on the entire Earth's surface many times over. Ant piss, whale piss, human piss. I think it made him uncomfortable. Then I would ask him if he thought anyone had fucked right where we were standing. He liked that one. It was so fucking simple with him.
Despite its lack of décor, the SHU cell's minimalism was anything but simple. If I had known about my time here when I was on the outside, I would have imagined that this would have been the part of the story where I got really ripped. I reflected on that day at the beach. What was I thinking? Did I really believe that I could use this time like a vacation? Like a fucking montage where I read and exercised and educated other, less fortunate women? The chilly chrome toilet seemed to think otherwise. I didn't want to hold it. I tried to position my mouth as far above the water as possible without the risk of splatter. Unfortunately, panic-induced vomiting precludes most rational thought, and my arms drew around the appliance as I dry heaved. This could have been your fitness montage, Chapman. This could have been your Rocky. You ignorant fuck. This is clearly the part where you come face to face with the wolf prowling inside your lonely, selfish soul. I don't know what was more disconcerting, my fear of what coated the back of the toilet or the realization, when my fingers clutched it, that all traces of my cell's former hostage had been wiped away and the surface was as aseptic as a fork dropped on a clean floor- outwardly spotless, but nothing you'd want to get too personal with. My stomach couldn't manage the lift to get anything all the way out of my throat, and so I retired to the concrete to think about better days.
Alex and I were standing on the tip of the world. Black sand crumbled where I stepped. There were monkeys howling in the background and the beach was patrolled by guards with machetes. For someone used to vacationing in well-stocked cabins, it was unreal. I was drunk on rum and she was staring at the un-fractured sky. "Hey Alex" She swung her head towards me. "Do you think anyone has peed right here in this very spot?"
She smiled, "The real question" she said with that off kilter intonation, "is if anyone has fucked right here in this very spot." I felt myself float into her arms "Which one would you like to make sure of?"
"I really have to pee" I whispered guiltily.
She scoffed and leaned in. I miss how we both smiled when we kissed. It was like our teeth kissed too.
Another thing I wish I had thought of when I was a free person was the emotion that being alone with yourself conjures. I spent hundreds of dollars in yoga classes attempting to connect with the parts of myself that crave cultivation. As soon as I had the money, I had wanted to go on a retreat in the woods in order to gain spiritual clarity. I think that the only differences between meditating underneath a pine tree and trying to escape the relentless scent of pine sol are the speed and depth of self-actualization. That outburst would probably have taken me years of coaching to express, although I would argue that fifteen months of your life is actually more expensive in the long run than thousands of dollars of gentle prodding and talk therapy. I actually like the thought of paying for services with time. It seems old fashioned and severe, which is a pretty accurate description of the prison system. It's almost comforting to know that for the low price of a month of my life, I could become tough. It was like paying with a first born child or a daughter's hand in marriage. Unconventional currency for important life lessons. The voice in the wall reached out to me with an eerie hello. We talked like caged birds cawing across the room, sharing the pain of watching flight through the window. As we talked, my heart sank. My panic began again, and with panic came the cool embrace of the toilet.
Everything was clean. Our bungalow was open to the world, but there were no insects. I sat in the doorway and hugged my knees to my chest, admiring the way that tropical places can move so slowly when the waves are calm and the sand is settled. It didn't feel like we were doing anything wrong here. I pretended that Alex was only selling drugs because she had no other options. I pretended that the only buyers were bored millionaires who got high in secret chambers with their many elite guests. She sat down next to me and began peeling a mango with a deboning knife. Her deftness skewered my illusions.
"Have you ever considered a real job?"
"Why? So I could save money my whole life to make this view a reality when I'm 80?" she tossed the peel to a scuttling crab. "No thanks. Do you think waiting tables is a real job?"
I was silent, my feelings hurt.
She continued, "If you thought a real job was so amazing, why are you here and not working?" She tried to feed me a piece of sweet, slippery fruit.
I pushed her away. "Ok Alex, I'm a hypocrite. I get it."
She dangled the mango I rejected over her mouth for a second before dropping it in and chewing. "Not a hypocrite, babe. You just like to take the easy road. I do too." She gestured out into the water with the knife, squinting over the thin blade, eyes dusted with last night's make-up. "I can guarantee you that the man in that boat is working harder today than you and I ever will in our lifetimes and all he'll get for it is leathery skin and five or six kids. Maybe a hook in the eye if he's really unlucky. All I have to do is move around some intoxicants and reap the rewards."
I watched the little dinghy she had singled out bobbing in deep water. "I think he's very brave" I said, "to work in the ocean like he does."
"We all have occupational hazards" she replied with a studied nonchalance.
"What's mine, seeing as how I have no occupation…"
Taking pity on my self-pity, she wound a sticky hand around my shoulder and pulled me close. "You're my other half, Pipes. My hazards are your hazards."
"But that doesn't make me brave."
"Not all of us are cut out to be brave. You're kind and hot and smart. Those are more important."
The chill from the floor was becoming a numbness when it occurred to me. The voice in the vent had laid my options out. I had to break. I had to break one way or another, either by acquiescing or by losing my mind. That's what fucked me. It wasn't my outburst. It wasn't me. It was the idea of failure; it was the precedent of losing. I closed my eyes and imagined that I was watching myself. I imagined watching myself lose it on Healy. I imagined that it was Nichols saying those words instead and I smiled. I imagined it was Alex and I felt a hum in my body. I let my mind fill in the details. She was flushed and gravelly. Her mouth was close enough to the glass to steam. "We go for tall, hot girls," she growled, "and we fucking love it." He slammed the window shut and I imagined her sauntering over to the bed and brewing her anger like a cup of strong coffee. It was a roiling black cloud, and deep within it, I saw her desire. I saw myself. I have never felt pride with a capitol P before, and now, I felt it in the desperate, community-forming way that grows under real oppression. This wasn't disobeying a family expectation or buying two Vera Wang wedding dresses. I felt a riotous appreciation for the lives of all the women who had made my hard choices relatively easy. Outside, I put a bumper sticker on my car. Now I was here. Now I had to be brave.
I closed my eyes and stoked the fire of my resolve. I had to grow stronger while looking like I had been broken. I breathed deeply as I focused on my goal. Somewhere in the forgotten icebergs of my subconscious, a memory broke free and floated towards my waking mind. I saw Alex and I in bed together. Our foreheads were pressed close and I was speaking softly. Her lips touched mine and her inscrutable eyes were momentarily unguarded. I don't know what we were talking about. I know that there were tears on her cheeks and she got up angrily and walked naked into the next room. Her body was sumptuously inked and curved. I loved it like I loved a landscape that was fiercer and more full of mystery than I will ever be. I missed her body. I missed the softness of hips and thighs and heavy eyelids. It was that memory that bore me through the unknown hours, a fantasy and a rebellion and a release of joie de vivre that led me to know a more dangerous, truer self. Without days or nights, the fluorescent lights tried to sap my resolve, but even as I sweated and froze and became grimy from the debris of solitary, I teased myself with the image of Alex in the doorway, black hair heavy around her shoulders, cheekbones catching the dim glow of morning.
She told me later, after I had coveted her, possessed her, that I had only been gone for 48 hours. I felt my boldness fading, and before a knowing smile could thin her lips and our old dynamic re-emerged, I rallied and grabbed her chin in my hand, forcing her to look into my eyes. The chapel buzzed with background electricity, the rough scrape of our uniforms as we lay entangled and half-dressed. I didn't have the words to tell her that she had been the catalyst for my sanity, and frankly, I didn't think she would use that information kindly. I simply attempted to pour my experience into her with rough kindness as she regained fluency in the usual, bone-shuddering language she used to reduce me to pure reaction. In thirty seconds, I was moaning her name and she was a hot July night that left me sweating and sleepless. However, as I broke, as I acquiesced, I could feel something new in my breast. As her hands melted my body, a silver seed convulsed in me and sprouted. You are brave, it said. Now you are brave. I held its message in a small smile against her neck. I held it as we exited the chapel and went our separate ways. Small as it is, I felt its presence all the way to my bed, where I promptly lay down and fell asleep, content knowing that even if I felt despair, I had not wasted my stay.