quizzical pussy

I don’t know exactly how concerned I should be that someone recently tried to access my personal Facebook account from the city where Reginald Sleeth now resides.

I should add the caveat here that it is a large city.

Reginald and I haven’t seen each other in over seven years. At least, I believe this to be true.

I saw him three years ago.

It was Christmas Eve. My grandmother was dying, and my sister and I had been visiting her in the hospital. She hadn’t woken up all night, even to look at us. I’d never seen her megawatt blue eyes dim before that week, and now there was nothing, and the later it got the more nothing eclipsed her. Her time was coming and the thought of it made my solar plexus ache. Eleven thirty we finally left. Eleven thirty and there was nothing at home but ingredients to eat. Eleven thirty, and we were drained and hungry and defeated.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t showered in at least two days and my fatigue settled on my face like two black eyes.

There was a single restaurant open that night in our smallish hometown. A greasy spoon that never closes, where kids can go pad their pickled stomachs after last call. We were just glad to find a place to sit down and vacantly watch someone put plates of warm things in front of us.

Right after the waitress, brown ponytailed and shimmery lidded, took our drink orders, the door swung open, briefly staining the air with the outside chill. And in he walked.

I could see him perfectly from the booth where I sat. Reginald Sleeth. His hair was spiked high, garishly, as he used to do it when he was feeling especially self-conscious. And he had gained some weight, perhaps, but he still fit in his old winter coat. His stride was the one I’d memorized, casually hunched but hemorrhaging arrogance. He was distracted by the girl who’d moved in after I’d left our shared apartment four years prior, and another couple. They all sat down at a big corner booth, Reginald in the middle, holding court as he loved to do.

Reginald Sleeth was not even supposed to be in the state. I’d heard he’d moved far away. I’d heard his parents had moved even farther. My stomach recoiled on itself. Suddenly, I’d never been less hungry in my life. Terror had taken over my torso, from tensed shoulders to thumping heart to plummeting guts. I dropped off my seat and hid behind the table.

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” I hissed to my sister, “Reginald just walked in.” She twisted around to see. “Don’t! Don’t look over there. I don’t think he saw me.”

“Are you okay?” She asked. See, I was crouching in abject horror on the floor at a greasy spoon diner, hiding from the person I feared most in this world. P.S. My grandma, one of my favorite people ever, full stop, was off dying in a hospital room down the road. ‘Okay’ was not a valid guess here. Hurriedly, I told her I was leaving. I was really sorry, but could she explain things to the waitress and follow me as soon as she could? I snuck a couple dollars onto the table and slithered out of there as quickly as my crippled limbs would carry me.

I don’t think he saw me. To this day I choose to believe that.

I choose to believe it partly because those were not the circumstances under which I was supposed to see him after all that time. What was supposed to happen, I’m sure, is something more like this:

I’m on a gorgeous, 16-hand Friesian stallion who is also a cyborg who can fly. Having just published my first international bestselling novel, I am riding through the countryside, looking inexplicably like Twin Peaks-era Sherilyn Fenn and wearing the coolest pair of sneakers in the world (because no fantasy is complete without great sneakers). Reginald is in a ditch, bawling because his life has collapsed like a house of cards. He is wearing flip-flops and has zero cyborg horses. I coolly observe Reginald from my high vantage, “You hurt me,” my eyes tell him. “I am a terrible person and you deserved better,” his say. A single tear rolls down my face and falls to the ground, where it becomes a beautiful blossom that will never fade nor die. That beautiful blossom sprays a toxic mist onto Reginald’s face, disfiguring him for life. Then I turn my flawless, porcelain doll face homeward, where I go have earth-shattering sex with diamond-studded nerdcore rappers who are also professional water polo players.

Is this so much to ask?

The other reason I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice me that Christmas Eve was because he didn’t acknowledge me or try to contact me soon afterward. And Reginald tries to contact me every so often. Sometimes to say he misses me, sometimes to say he’s sorry, and sometimes to be fucking creepy. Once he emailed me (at an address I never gave him) to cryptically tell me that he prays… every day. As far as I know he’s still an atheist, so I don’t even know what that means!

It’s been a while– over a year– since his last try. I hope I’m off his radar. But whenever something weird happens, like when, say, someone tries to hack into my Facebook account, I have a moment of panic. In a twisted, fucked up way, it’ll never be completely over with him, and I will have to live with that even after my cyborg Friesian ship comes in. But every time I don’t respond to whatever shit he’s trying to pull, he doesn’t win, and that’s something.

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