Everyone Knows That

Belle View Bingo Part 3

Dear Reader, this is the 3rd installment of a larger piece: Belle View Bingo. I invite you to read the first and second sections first. The photos are all details of the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain. My favorite place in the world.

Romeo

I made the mistake of telling Romeo I fucked this guy without a condom, and he got mad. Told me I was being irresponsible. It just kind of happened, and then he was inside of me, and he said: Shit, I don’t have a condom on. He said, Have you been tested recently? And I said, Yes. But it was too late. I pulled his hips closer to me, and he exhaled. This man I didn’t know, but trusted. And he kept saying, Fuck, this was supposed to be a just a hookup, but you’re cool.

And Romeo would not let me live it down. Sex without a condom. Romeo, who says the phrase raw dog with no irony. Romeo who refuses to use condoms because he doesn’t like how they feel and risks pregnancy every time he has sex. I have an IUD. I have an IUD.

The next time I fucked the guy, we used a condom. I’m not an idiot. We used a condom because that’s what you do. And he had this beautiful apartment with nothing on the walls. And he fucked me so good that when I came, I just lay there feeling my heart beat. And then I curled into his pillow and he wrapped the duvet around me.

My friends don’t like Samson. He is both emotionally and physically unavailable. He ghosts me for weeks and then expects me to show up when he calls. Between the first and second time I saw him, I pretty much accepted that I would never see him again. I called him my Tinder Angel. But now, I think he’ll come back. I think he likes me just as much as I like him, but he’s going through some shit. Fine.

I don’t care if he doesn’t text me for months and then shows up out of the blue. It’s 2022. When someone makes you feel safe, and comfortable, and like you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not, like, he sees the dozen bottles of medication of your mantle and looks at them to see what you’re taking, isn’t terrified that your brain is so broken it needs all these meds just to function, just to stay alive, you don’t let that person go. Not internally.

Maybe I never see him again.

I’m not in a position to be in a relationship right now, actually, either.

But I love Samson. Just like how I loved Abraham, and Lyle, and Romeo, and Adam, and Philip.

Denying it won’t do me any good. And I’m not going to tell him. I’m not trying to scare him away. But I don’t get to choose who I love, and denying it will only make it hurt. And if I love him, I either love him forever, or he breaks my heart. If you think this is easy, or convenient, it’s not. But sometimes I feel so broken, I am amazed I can love anyone or anything at all. Love is a well that goes on forever. Time is finite. There is no reason not to love openly and thoroughly. Love is the one that knows no bounds. And though to love is to make yourself vulnerable, to risk getting hurt, I am already hurting, physically, all the time. I’m not scared of pain anymore. I’m not scared of heartbreak.

I texted Samson when I got out last time, and he didn’t answer. But he read it, I’m sure.

The boys in my life tend to be pretty forgiving of my mania. It’s the girls who get scared away and hold grudges. At its best, mania makes me charming, magnetic almost. It makes guys want to fuck me. Even if the mania gets weird or scary or dark, a boy will usually forgive me. It’s the girls who “need space,” who pull away, who use the word “burden.”

Cat

D and I are sitting against the windows in green chairs that have no arms. D elbows me: Go check on the new girl. Across the room, a girl in Belle View Blues has her head in her hands and her hands on her thighs. I walk over and sit next to her.

Hey, I’m Naomi. Do you want to come sit over there with us?

New Girl nods. She follows me past the tables, to our spot by the window. She introduces herself as Cat. She is 21. She goes to an elite NYC university, studying business. In undergrad. She’s Chinese.

She is here because she was going to jump off a roof, but she called a friend to say goodbye, and that friend intervened. We question her as to why she’s here? In Hell. Did she flash her school ID in the ambulance? Apparently not.

She seems fragile.

D and I warn her: You’re going to be called racial slurs here. Buckle up.

Cat nods. She’s no dummy.

For everything there is a season, a time for everything under the heavens.

A time to be offended by racial slurs, and a time to laugh it off.

By the time I pass on, Cat will be brought to hysterics when D lowers his voice, and says: come here my little [REDACTED].

You don’t know how bad things can get, how much you can withstand, when you will break, until you’re living it. I packed for this, literally. But the only thing they let me keep is a Dead & Company shirt I cut into a crop top, which I wear only over something else. You’d have to be crazy to expose your midriff in a place like this, and I, unfortunately, am not crazy.

I am, technically. But to dress like a slut here, you have to be out of your mind, like living in a different reality, crazy.

Mags once came to the doorway of her room in just an orange bodysuit. Low back, tits peeking out of a square neckline. Nipples hard. Pluto and I were seated inside and outside his room, respectively. He was eating candy.

Jesus! Mags, put some clothes on!

Seriously. Go put pants on, now.

Mags, we’re not kidding. Go get dressed. You can’t be dressed like that in here.

Mr. Sprightly

There is a man in a wheelchair who said to Pluto, I’m going to stick my dick up your ass. But, he asks me to open his orange juice for him because his hands shake, and I oblige. When Cat shows up, he says, I’ve fucked everyone else in here, when I’m going to fuck you?

Abraham explains it to me: there was a time where you could get a cheap prostitute to be cheaper by negging her. Mr. Sprightly has to be like 80. One day he peed himself in the Day Room, and I watched him grasp the plastic couch for support because he could not get himself back into the chair. Around him the staff made it clear that they were inconvenienced and annoyed. The whole scene was sad. I watched because I had nothing else to do. Mr. Sprightly was helped back into the chair, wheeled away to be changed.

Then one day Pluto and I are walking out of the Day Room with D, and Mr. Sprightly says to D: You get the tall one; I get the short one.

For the rest of my stay, D tells me: You’re Mr. Sprightly’s. He claimed you.

He squints his eyes, and makes his voice raspy. He says: He said, you get the tall one. I get the short one.

I cackle with laughter. Tip my head back in mirth.

Pluto III

Pluto has the elastic of his pants rolled at least twice. He raises his arms above his head. Do I look like an extra large? I laugh, and say, No, you certainly do not.

The deal with clothes here is that the blue stuff is all XL, but ideally we get fresh tops and bottoms whenever we want. There is a closet on the ward filled with towels, socks and BelleView Blues. The Blues are so thin my underwear shows through. The top has three snaps, but they end too low, and the shirt reveals way more cleavage than I feel comfortable showing. I wear my Dead & Co. crop top over it.

Practically, it is really hard to find someone to get us fresh clothes. Everyone has stains on their clothes. There is a washing machine on the ward, but everyone I’ve talked to about doing laundry has told me you don’t get your stuff back.

One day there is a man who is offering to get us clothes, but this is early and I do not realize the opportunity I am being given. I ask for a sweatshirt, and am given a huge, gray sweatshirt that zips up. The strings have been removed from the hood.

Baby Man Baby

Lyle comes up to me and Pluto in the Day Room and says: Christian, thug, sinner. I’ll take you out to dinner.

We agree that is a good one.

Neon

Let me tell you how I feel. You didn’t ask. Nobody asks. But let’s say you did, what would I say?

It is hard to tell which I notice first, the pain or the hunger. Although anyone who has really been hungry knows that hunger is pain, too.

Let’s say it’s the pain. I’ve been ignoring hunger my whole life. The pain is easy to describe. I say: It feels like my skin is being flayed off by a very sharp knife. All over my body, but most strongly on my arms and legs. And then I say: It also feels like my bones are mushy, and someone is sitting on them. An elephant, maybe. A car.

Besides the pain, the issue is that I can’t catch my breath. All of my breaths are shallow. Sometimes my heart races so fast, I have to pull over on the street and calm myself down before I can walk home. One of my theories is that I’m oxygen deprived.

Right now, I fill my lungs. And release.

That feels better, sure. But my heart is racing. I feel it everywhere. I’m not a hypochondriac, but I worry my heart is going to explode.

And the nausea. I’ve been about to throw up all day. I would force it, but I know there’s nothing in my stomach. Dry heaving is the worst part of vomiting. Everyone knows that.