Caroline Hayes

People tell me I often make the mistake of wearing day clothes during the night. They say I should not be going to bars in day clothes, in case I can catch men! I’ve caught two men in my life. The net was really big and there were so many holes in it. The two gentlemen squirmed in the itchy fabric and knew me as the same thing: as someone who said novel things accidentally. That was the best thing I’ve heard in a long time! Did you read about the exhibit beforehand? Or did you think of that yourself? I did! I think these thoughts all by myself!

It’s strange to live in a city where so many women look the same. I see myself two or three times a day: in coffee shops, in libraries, on the subway cars that bring me safely to bed. I often wonder who first transformed into whom.

The abridged trajectory of my life: I stopped making friends when I was 20, I let the fish boys out of the net at 23, and now at 25 I’ve found myself cleansed. Sanctioned holy by two years of celibacy, I play self-improvement games. I curse only when I need to, I picture my chief editor naked only when I need to, and I lift weights after work even though my legs look like a chicken’s.

Midtown swirls around me each Monday thru Friday and I land at a desk near Chuck, the chief editor of Stuff.com, a website that repurposes news from reputable sources and rewrites the articles with an ironic wink. I am the ironic wink, or so I was hired to be. I’m paid to add sardonic asides to stories as eclectic as Prince William’s wedding to the newest bout of violence in my neighborhood, the latter my current story. When I’m writing about topics that should include exactly zero attempts at humor, I try to at least whittle down the number of jokes. My current record is three; Chuck has never let any of my articles go out without three jokes, no matter the subject matter.

The Stuff.com office sits on the top floor of a three-story, grey brick building tucked in the middle of a residential Midtown block. Once a single-family home like the other structures on the street, the building is now cut up into cozy two-room offices for therapists and insurance companies and us. Chuck works in a room with two front-facing windows and my desk is in a reception-style anteroom that connects his office to the hallway. When I’m at work alone, which is often, I prefer Chuck’s desk. 

I place my laptop at the window and let my gaze drift down to the New Yorkers walking along the street below. I allow myself to get lost in their hair and their clothes and their steady movement forward. A pigeon interrupts. He lands on the sill and jerks his neck back and forth in a stuttered swivel, doing his own assessment of the city block. Its hyper-vigilance motivates me to look down at my laptop, to edit this article. Dear Pigeon, I vow to report on the repeated stabbings of women in Brooklyn with sincerity, despite Chuck’s mandatory joke tax.

The door of the office opens. Chuck knows I use his desk, but I still jump at the sound. I hear the high-pitched clink of thin metal on thin metal.

“He’s heeere!!” I screech in an exaggerated baby voice.

Chuck often brings his golden retriever to work, and on those days, we take our lunches together. Walt the dog will soon drag me to the Four Seasons and demand treats from the doorman.

I return to my apartment and the cockroaches in my building come out of the walls to die, like they’re looking for an audience. Although, that can’t be right. When my childhood cat hid under the porch to let the cancer reach its brain, my dad told me it’s animal instinct to hide decay, so that it doesn’t attract predators to the pack. Our cat was trying to protect her family. I don’t consider the roaches part of my family, so I imagine my role in its death performance is quite different. Perhaps I’m his refuge, the hiding place from the other creatures living in the walls, the escape for its rot. I’m happy to provide him the dignity to die alone.

My bedroom is a compact vessel for my daily goings-on, with bedroom, living room and kitchen nestled within the same four walls. For the last few weeks, I’ve been interviewing people in my neighborhood about their relationship to violence, so my apartment is littered with sticky-note quotes, many from men who vow my protection. No one pulls that shit off on my watch. I’d kill any motherfucker who tried anything. I swear that I would. The sticky-notes that haven’t fallen from the walls hang above me like cranes.

Unfortunately, when I was walking to the subway the next day, two men told me that they’d like to suck my little titties. I put my head down and continued across the intersection. Is this the first time a woman was threatened according to her small breasts? Surely, so! I reversed the codes of catcalling. I should have patted myself on the back. Instead, I wrote the comment on a sticky-note and brought it along to work.

All introspection has left me. It’s Friday and I’m sitting at my desk, eyes vacant, having just published the two-joke-only stabbing story. I successfully convinced Chuck to let go of a third and redirected the remaining two jokes toward hipsters who look like chimney sweeps. I successfully lowered the minimum joke count per article on Stuff.com. I successfully added actual reporting to the article. I successfully did hours of research. Repeating the word “success” in my mind hasn’t yet lifted my malaise.

I hear Chuck’s computer ding with a notification. “Nice job!” he calls out from his office. The story must have loaded onto the website.

I hear his chair roll along the hardwood. I hear him step toward me. I hear his hand descend gently onto my desk. “Do you want to celebrate over dinner?” I force myself to not look down at his wedding ring. I think men are most attracted to me when I feel most hollow.

We walk to a greasy pizza place with live jazz, and I sit behind a woman with a cat sitting on her shoulder. The cat has fur like lightly shadowed snow and a teeny pink nose. His features are drawn together to the center of his face like he’s trying to play the part of a mouse. The cat’s magnetism is so far beyond that of the pizza or the jazz or the man beside me. The cat mom feels my attention and meets my eye.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll jump down and get lost?” I ask.

“Honey, I’d rather him be free, if it means he can do as he pleases!”

The gall. Of this woman. To believe her cat knows what it pleases to do. It makes me grind my teeth in pleasure, or anger.

Chuck’s apartment is conveniently in walking distance from the restaurant. His furniture is smooth in black and brown leathers with couch pillows meant to match the mossy green color of his machine-perfect rug. He places a glass of red wine in front of me, on a modern hunk of wood meant to look like a refurbished tree trunk. I can’t find a single smudge or scratch on anything. I can’t find evidence of a life lived, nor a wife.

He makes the affair quick, sucking on my nipples long enough to jack off on my stomach. He closes his eyes to sleep. I prod his chest with my head. He brings his hand down my stomach and uses two fingers to reach inside. I imagine he finds loose change.

I take a bagel to Prospect Park early before Chuck wakes up and a mohawked goth girl sits on the bench across from me. I wonder how long it takes her to get ready in the morning. Does she have impulses like me? When I push my hair aside, hoping to put it blindly in the desired place, does she lick her finger and do the same? Does she, too, wonder throughout the day, When am I myself? When do I fulfill the right codes and make others sigh in relief?

The day my Aunt Lisa accidentally shared multiple Facebook videos of women with huge boobs riding rollercoasters, I remember thinking, perhaps the world just saw the final piece of herself she was keeping private. When her husband saw the video and learned his wife likely enjoys the bounce of large breasts, did her identity solidify and reveal itself to him in its entirety? Was the final piece of mystery between them gone? It’s comforting, I think, to never know if or when someone has seen the full picture.

Prospect Park’s wifi is weak, but I manage to load Wordpress, find my article and click “rewrite”. I scroll down to paragraph five and delete the two stupid jokes Chuck wanted to include. The erasure leaves two exaggerated blank spaces at the center of the paragraph like two punched-out teeth. I widen the spaces and press “publish”.