Everything Was Fine Until Whatever Page 6

  2006

  Joe visits me in Oakland. He makes racist jokes and tells me he wants to fight the black guys who hang out around my apartment building.

  I see Erin at Christmas and try to talk to him. He can’t hold a conversation, stares blankly, eats with his fingers, and laughs to himself the whole time. I pretend I don’t know he just got out of the mental hospital and ask him what he’s been up to. He says ‘not much.’ He gives me a really good hug right before I leave.

  Becca calls me crying one day. She says she’s sorry for not calling me or answering my calls. She says she has a boyfriend and he is chronically depressed and has dropped out of school. She asks if I can come visit her. I can’t.

  I drop significantly on Becca’s Myspace top friends.

  2007

  I visit Joe in Oregon and stay with him and his girlfriend at their apartment. They have a baby boy. Becca and her boyfriend come down with their baby and stay at Joe’s apartment, too.

  I see Jaime one day when I’m in town and we talk about childhood and I notice how different our vocabularies are.

  I go to Oregon again, but no one answers the phone when I call.

  Wait, Why are You in Denial?

  There are two kinds of people in this world, I know I’m making a lot of generalizations. I think the only way to ever say anything real about the world is to make generalizations. But maybe that’s a generalization. I should look up the word. Sometimes I meet someone who doesn’t fit into any of my generalizations and I feel tongue-tied or something. I feel like I’m just standing there. Once I woke up with my mouth open and my cell phone in my hand ready to make a text message. It was scary. There are two types of people. There is the type of person who gets really afraid of the world when they think about their own anatomy, and there is the type of person who gets really afraid of the world when they think about outer space. I forget where I was going with that.

  Insecurities in Cuties

  It is Halloween and you and him are making candy apples. You say you can’t eat any because you have some fake teeth, and that they might break on sticky candy. You show him the teeth by taking them out and laying them on the kitchen counter. He then shows you that each of his arm hairs is detachable.

  If You Were Wondering if You’re a Selfish Asshole

  – Can I use that pen really quick?

  – I’m using it.

  – Sorry. I’ll give it right back. I’m sorry.

  – If you were wondering if you’re a selfish asshole, then no, you’re not. If anything, you’re really nice. And not in a manipulative way. That’s not what I’m saying.

  – I’m not sure what you’re saying. Here’s the pen.

  – I like that drawing. You’re talented. And not in the pretentious way. I believe in you. I believe in Love and Positive Thinking and Global Warming and I believe in you.

  – Thank you. I believe in you too.

  – Have you ever fought a battle you knew you were going to lose?

  – I fought a bakery once because they charged me fifty cents more for a loaf of bread than they usually did. I had been their customer for many years and was pretty disheartened by the price increase. But it turns out that the owner of the bakery had been giving me a discount all those years and had just forgotten to on that particular day.

  – Do you still go to that bakery?

  – No, but I want to.

  – Have you fought any other battles?

  – Why are you thinking about battles?

  – I’m not really thinking very hard about battles. It’s just that I was thinking about how bored I was and wishing that I were happier, or even sadder. I feel pretty convinced that I would feel better even if I was sadder. Boredom is the worst. Stagnation. That’s another word for it.

  – I see.

  – But it sounds like a battle you can’t win. Becoming sadder to improve overall mood. But I think that really is the case.

  – I think you would feel differently if you were sad.

  – No I wouldn’t. I’m a little sad right now. Did you just flip that guy off?

  – He was rubbing that girl’s ass and staring at my chest.

  – That seems rude.

  – What were you saying?

  – I think we should get lunch soon.

  If I were a poet the first thing I’d do is get a real dark tan.

  Puberty

  Everyone was there, watching. Aunt Jackie. Katie and Marie. Mom. Grandma Billie and Grandma Mo. Todd. Aunt Rachel and Uncle Phil. The three neighbor kids who hadn’t introduced themselves yet. The guy who had come to fix the roof. My friend Dennis. Aunt Rachel’s best friend Amy on speakerphone.

  I counted to ten. Then, when ten didn’t work, I counted to twenty. I asked my mom how high she thought I should count. It’s different for everyone, she said. Alright, I said. Then I counted to fifty.

  Aunt Jackie and Aunt Rachel started talking about my posture and my quick temper. They were speaking in lowered voices, but everyone else was completely silent, so it was easy to hear them. Aunt Rachel mentioned that I had recently cried over the movie She’s All That. It was disturbing, Aunt Rachel said. It’s just the hormones, Aunt Jackie said. That, and all the counting.

  My mom asked the guy who came to fix our roof if he had a cigarette. He said he didn’t smoke and called my mom Lady. She told him to take his time with the roofing thing, it was no big deal, it was just a silly little thing, and that we were thinking of getting rid of the roof altogether. The man who came to fix the roof didn’t answer and continued to stare at me.

  I counted to one hundred.

  I started to hear noises coming from someone’s stomach, but no one said anything, then the noise stopped. A little while later I heard another stomach noise and someone said, Shh. One of the neighbor kids fell asleep on the couch.

  Counting to two hundred was rough. I felt embarrassed. I began to develop a small fear that I would never stop counting. That this was my life now. This was who I was.

  Uncle Phil asked me if I was a virgin. My mom told me I didn’t have to answer that. I answered. Grandma Billie said she understood.

  After I reached three hundred, Todd handed me a calculator. I cut my hair off really short like a boy and then regretted it. Pizza arrived mysteriously at the house and everyone ate. I fell asleep on the floor and when I woke up Aunt Jackie prompted me, You were at three hundred fifty.

  Ohmagah seriouslahh.

  How to Save Money on Your Car Insurance

  There is something really bad about sincerely believing that the world is getting ready to end. It almost feels like being on drugs. Like everything means exactly what it means and nothing means anything else and nothing is promised and you get what you get and one day you stop getting anything and you barely realize anything has changed. Sometimes I can convince myself that the world is not going to end, and then immediately convince myself that I will instead get a terrible disease and die anyways, alone, which is worse. I get panicky. I think, Please let the world end before I get a terrible disease and die. That would be so humiliating. Sometimes I want the world to end right now, not because I don’t value life. I love living. It’s just that, why continue when you know you can’t make it to the end? When you can’t tell your grandchildren all the stories you’ve been planning on telling them? I suppose you could just say your stories out loud, towards your ovaries, and think really hard about the potential ovaries of your little eggs and think of the eggs inside the potential ovaries as grandchildren. Then you might feel like you’ve told your grandchildren what you’ve been planning on telling them. But they won’t remember, and I think memory is the most important part. It’s like staying alive or something. It’s like a sourdough starter. This is the story I want to tell my grandchildren:

  Kids, I am your grandmother. Do you want to make me feel proud of you? There is one thing you need to know. You need, need, need to save money on your car insurance. That is key. I don’t know what car insurance pr
ices will be like when you’re old enough to want car insurance, but maybe you will not even need a car. I heard they were going to start implanting microchips into people’s brains that made brains more like computers. So maybe you won’t even need a car because you won’t need to drive to the café to check your email. Do you still use the term ‘email’? Maybe it’s archaic. Sometimes there are other reasons to need a car, such as if you’re trying to find someone whose cell phone is turned off or if you need to go buy a new computer, but all of this should really be eliminated once everybody gets the microchips.

  More Perfect and Less Idealistic

  It was important that we rode the bus like this. Aimlessly. I was turning him into someone I would want to be friends with later when I needed friends. I was steering the conversation into something he could copy later, with me or with others. I was injecting my cynicism, my malleability, my disregard for social skills and physical appearance. I felt like there was no one in the whole world who cared about him as much as I did. I felt like I cared about no one else as much as I cared about him. He was mine momentarily and he was small and perfect, like a smaller more perfect version of myself, and we were in San Francisco and he was talking to me and I was trying really hard to pay attention. I wanted him to be mine and be small and look like me and seem fragile even with his glasses on and he was all of this, even without me.

  Today is the Worst Day of My Entire Life (I Always Live in the Present)

  I have seen actual eggs on the ground on hot days, not frying.

  I have seen porta-potties turned over, no big deal.

  I read once that a bruise larger than the size of one fourth of one’s body is actually considered a broken bone.

  I am considering reading Crime and Punishment for sport.

  I am considering starting a Joy Luck Club.

  I know Forrest Gump by heart.

  I have been to Starbucks on purpose.

  I have cut an umbilical cord.

  I believe anything if it’s written in Courier 12pt.

  I know Home Alone by heart.

  I believe that the easiest way to impress someone is by reciting lines from Home Alone spontaneously.

  I think there is something really special about Play-doh that has never been handled.

  I want to believe in Health Benefits.

  I want to believe in Laughter Is The Best Medicine.

  I want to ignore the dress code at work.

  I want to start saving good text messages onto a zip drive.

  I want to start proving complicated philosophical theories by flashing oncoming traffic and mocking celebrities.

  I can’t express my feelings fully.

  I can’t compete with Wal-Mart’s prices.

  I can’t imagine myself in a world without Wal-Mart.

  I like kids.

  I am embarrassed about my naiveté.

  I am embarrassed about certain pairs of my underwear.

  I am embarrassed about the dreadlock that’s forming in the back of my hair.

  I am embarrassed about my mood sometimes when I’m really moody.

  I like the indoors a lot.

  I like believing what people tell me.

  I like believing that others believe I believe what they tell me.

  I think about what others think about me.

  I think about people who I have no business thinking about.

  I think about my teacher from fourth grade, whose voice was calming.

  I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I don’t like.

  I feel afraid that I will die while in a state of boredom.

  I don’t ever want to die.

  I don’t ever want to choreograph a dance routine.

  I don’t ever want to be compared to Miley Cyrus.

  I have lied several times in the last few minutes.

  I have played Mortal Combat and won.

  I have played Chinese checkers without knowing the rules.

  I have borrowed books and never returned them.

  I copy answers when I don’t feel like showing my work.

  I design websites to keep track of my hormonal fluctuations.

  I design websites to attract potential mates.

  I spend money irresponsibly to attract potential mates.

  I trick potential mates into buying me alcohol.

  I trick potential mates into writing love poems about me.

  I might be getting a headache.

  I might be watching an episode of Friends.

  I might be paying someone else to write this for me.

  I’d rather have nothing than something that isn’t exactly what I want. –personal philosophy success story.

  What the Tabloids are Saying About Me

  “Martin looks ugly on Myspace. Doesn’t she realize it?”

  “Chealsea Martin gives a shit, we heard. She’s into herself. She uses zit cream.”

  “Chelsea Martin is just like Ryan Seacrest only less beautiful, less popular, and less talented.”

  “Chelsea Martin is dating Ryan Seacrest, we heard. Or wait, Amy Winehouse is dating him.”

  “Amy Winehouse and Chelsea Martin are working on the next great American novel together and they both dumped Ryan Seacrest cos who the fuck is that, even?”

  “Chelsea Martin just released her new book about herself. Big surprise.”

  “What is Chelsea Martin doing? Dressing weird? Where is her hat? Does she usually wear a hat?”

  “Ack! Chelsea Martin did alcohol over the weekend! What was she thinking?!”

  “Insider reports they heard Chelsea Martin talking to her current lover on her cell phone about an episode of that Kathy Griffin reality show. Wait, what Kathy Griffin reality show?”

  “[Chelsea Martin] was spotted at Church’s Chicken. Onlooker says she took over ten minutes to order one piece of breast meat to go.

  The author would like to thank Kevin Sampsell, Megan Vrolijk, Brandon Gorrell, Jenn Lawrence, Julee Johnson, River Johnson, Kylie Martin-Johnson, Mike Young, William Schultz and Laurel Gunnarson.

  Chelsea Martin was born in 1986 and grew up in Clearlake, California and currently lives in Oakland, California. She is a recent graduate of California College of the Arts.

  To learn more about Chelsea Martin, visit her website at www.jerkethics.com

  (This book had a number of titles attached to it during its production. They were: Your Secrets Are Funny, Some Mean Wishes, Off To Therapy, Really Though, You’re Welcome, Nice Syntax Kind Of, The Kiss-Ass Olympics, Here’s Some Awkward Tension and Transparent Compliments, Untitled Cos I’m Blackout Drunk A Little, Impulsive Kite Flying, Paranormal Shower Drain Findings, Startling Photos of Death-Comets Coming Toward Us, The Outsiders, Orange You, Seems Like No One Singing, I Practically Never Want to Harm You, Pains In The Asses, Real Flattery, Too Too Much)

  Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

  by Chelsea Martin

  Copyright 2009 Chelsea Martin

  and Future Tense Books

  ISBN: 978-1-892061-59-1

  Some pieces previously appeared (usually in a slightly different form) in: See You Next Tuesday, Young Revolutionaries, and Zygote in my Coffee.

  Cover and interior artwork by the author

  Ebook design by Christian Minnick

  Type set in Cochin

  Future Tense Books

  PO Box 42416

  Portland, OR 97242

  futuretense@q7.com

  www.futuretensebooks.com

  I want time to go by very slowly and for me to die quietly in my sleep in the back room at work with liquor bottles all around me, and concrete evidence that I was trying to steal the fax machine.

  Other Books from Future Tense

  Everything Was Fine Until Whatever by Chelsea Martin, $11

  Embrace Your Insignificance: Lessons Learned Teaching English in Japan by Bob Gaulke, $11

  Our Beloved 26th by Riley Michael Parker, $3

  Partial List of Pe
ople to Bleach by Gary Lutz, $6

  Before You She Was a Pitbull by Elizabeth Ellen, $5

  Dahlia Season: A Novella & Stories by Myriam Gurba, $14.95

  Don’t Take Your Life by Justin Maurer, $5

  Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter by Eric Spitznagel, $13.95

  The Heart Is Also a Furnace by Magdalen Powers, $5

  Happy Ending by Mike Topp, $5

  Future Tense Books

  PO Box 42416

  Portland, OR 97242

  For quicker service, order from our website www.futuretensebooks.com