This is what we tell ourselves about places like this: that they belong only to a certain New York, a New York of discrete transactions and brass plaques reading “Jeffrey E. Epstein Corporation.”

But even when I felt ashamed for liking her, I also saw her as somehow supernaturally chosen for me. She rejected me from the moment we met. 

I love idiots. Or at least some of them anyway.

What was I supposed to do on Friday nights when there was nothing to celebrate?

That day I let him touch me in his car on the side of the train tracks outside of town.

Her favorite video was one of a girl getting fucked during a Zoom meeting.

No one has dared come to my front door. No one has dared to meet me face to face. 

At that point her father filled the rooms with firearms. Instead of a house tour Lizzie liked to give friends the glock safari.

They always share their worst secrets with me and look to me for female forgiveness.

That date where he asked if we could have a threesome and I said no and so we had sex on his roof instead

The ladybug nymphs were hatching in the hoop house.

Otters float in pools of blood, swans tangle in rivers of entrails. Heads of leopards wear fringed shawls, their fangs piercing shallow trenches.

He told me he knew someone on death row. That dreamcatchers weaken over time. He said Oktoberfest was the Promised Land.

Before the third time I lost my virginity, I recorded myself eating an orange with nothing but my mouth.

The wanting requires an immense amount of theater.

I’ve never told anyone this story before because it is a little embarrassing. Plus legally I’m not really supposed to talk about it but…here we go. 

I had my first sexual experience when I was

There is inherent loneliness in the mountains.

Catholic guilt burned a hole in my palm and hidden in a bag, inside another bag, I lowered it into a dumpster like burying evidence of dead nuns. 

I felt his absence slowly growing and absorbing me like a black hole. 

Other people when they have a sore throat and can't sleep: "I have a sore throat and can't sleep."

Me when I have a sore throat and can't sleep:

+

It’s been 3:20 in the morning for ages. I

You didn’t want to manipulate me like you did the others. Should I feel bad for the others? 

The room smelled like beer and sweat and crushed velvet. The air seemed to hum, hot and full of dust particles and guitar feedback. 

She wasn’t cruel. She smiled when he refilled her water glass. She asked about his mother. They had sex with the lights on.

That sudden clarity pierced through her: the baby’s soft blanket; the Frappuccino sweating in her hand, the grocery list in the diaper bag. All of this could change and when it did, she would cease to exist.

Some girls become Liz. Some girls want to be her. Some just want her. A fictional short story about Liz, Richard and an anonymous anti-hero.