Ava W.

When I first reached out about participating in this project, things were different than they are now, which is precisely what I feared.

6:51 a.m.

Roused from my dream by the sharp pressure of Junie’s paws kneading my side. I always dream vividly. Depending on the contours of my life, the motifs vary, but they tend to fall under the same umbrella: longing, grief.

I try to reenter my dream—I will admit that it was pleasant—but the cats have located a bottlecap, and the sound of plastic skating along hardwood grates me awake.

7:52 a.m.

For the past three weeks, a series of men have been filing in and out of my home. My parents and I bought this house together in 2019, not long before the onset of the pandemic. Since then, it has necessitated repair after repair. Today, it’s the kitchen sink, which collapsed in on itself last Saturday. They arrive late, disgruntled and paint-splattered, muttering something about an ill-fitting P-trap.

8:40 a.m.

“Wrong drill bit,” they say. I nod. What else can I do?

8:43 a.m.

The contractors have abandoned me until later in the afternoon, when they allege that they will be returning with the correct drill bit. I’m splayed on the bed, spreadeagle, watching the ceiling fan shudder as it spins.

8:46 a.m.

I tally the items on my nightstand. From left to right: Oblong touch lamp; wireframe glasses from Zenni Optical with the structural integrity of a paper straw; Nalgene; empty box of noise-cancelling sleep earplugs; small jar of loose change; remotes for the TV and fan; cylindrical container of cones because I can’t roll a joint and refuse to learn; cow-print, heart-shaped box I use to store all of my smoking paraphernalia; D-Mannose with hibiscus; Prozac from a website that keeps trying to sell me generic Ozempic for $199/month; lube; grinder; three ashtrays filled with roaches and the broken shell of a single Adderall capsule; loose joint; directions for birth control; birth control.

9:12 am.

I purchased my Nalgene from Herman’s two months ago, unaware that it glowed in the dark until I awoke in the night and found it glaring at me. I remain convinced, perhaps reasonably so, that drinking from a glow-in-the-dark plastic vessel for a prolonged period of time will prove detrimental to my health.

I fight the twist-off Prozac cap and swallow one pill with a long, desperate swig from my radioactive bottle. Water trickles down my chin and onto the sheets.

9:34 a.m.

It is simply too late to take on a task as ambitious as cleaning my room, especially given today’s particular constraints. This, of course, is a lie.

10:12 a.m.

Ozempic… I shouldn’t, right? I wonder if Jesse Plemons suffered stomach paralysis, or nuclear burps, or projectile vomiting. I suppose that only time will tell if he succumbs to thyroid cancer.

11:06 a.m.

Basil likes to observe me while I get ready for the day. He’s perched on my unmade bed, paws neatly crossed, head cocked to one side. My little gentleman.

My nipples are visible through my white t-shirt and bralette, but I can’t be bothered with underwire. I blot my lipstick and run a finger through my curls, damp and mostly set, extensions already tugging at my scalp.

The day’s trajectory:

·      Mike’s

·      IKEA

·      Figs

·      Dinner with Matt and Graham

·      Reading

·      ???

11:24 a.m.

The great city of Philadelphia has blessed me with another ticket for my expired inspection. I load the car and zip across Broad for my first stop of the day.

Figure 1:  Basil in his favorite cardboard box. Figure 2: Turkey bacon, egg, Cooper Sharp, tomato, arugula, and red onion on a toasted everything bagel from Bart’s.

11:31 a.m.

Mike opens the door and invites me inside; I thwart his attempt to carry the mirror up the front steps. I notice that he’s wearing Realtree Crocs. For weeks, I’ve been pawning my belongings off on him. Every hour, a text: Do you want my bookshelf? Bar cart? Water Pik (unused, still in the box)? Peach cobbler? Plant stand? Food processor?

August appears at the top of the steps. He approaches cautiously, tail curling like smoke. It’s our inaugural encounter. I offer him my loose fist to sniff. Mike watches, bemused, as I kneel and rub behind his ears, cooing sweet nothings under my breath. His fur is the same texture as Junie’s, but he’s larger and longer, like Basil. After a few minutes, I pry myself away.

“Do you want any figs?” I ask. “I’m seeing the fig man.”

He does. We say our goodbyes and I depart, promising to return later that afternoon with the figs in question. I think to myself, I have known Mike for two haircuts.

12:06 p.m.

It’s my third time at the new Bart’s Bagel’s location on 10th and Fitzwater. Since Korshak’s closing, I have yet to find an adequate bagel spot, so this will have to plug the cavernous void inside of me until Bagel Boss expands beyond Long Island and Boca Raton. I claim an unoccupied table in the outdoor seating area and unwrap my breakfast sandwich, licking a glob of Cooper Sharp off the wax paper. I recall my dream from earlier and frown. Across the courtyard, a man mistakenly interprets my expression as one of disgust directed toward him. He’s wearing a top that reads: Ballz to the walz! Vote blue. Before I can shoot him an apologetic, tight-lipped smile, he vanishes.

2:15 p.m.

Last summer, when I believed myself to be falling in love, all of the plants in my bedroom died. I once considered this an omen, but time has offered me the distance to reflect with clarity. Here’s what really happened: I stopped watering them. Instead, I spent most mornings studying the sleeping profile of my lover, chest swollen with something warm and unfamiliar. Later, I gathered their decaying corpses and plunged them into a trash bag, browned leaves crunching underfoot. The romance of this is not lost on me.

I refused to replace them for over a year. Now, I struggle to adjust the enormous dracaena in my passenger seat, straining against the seatbelt in its comically large pot. There are two pothos and a hypoestes in the back seat, balanced precariously atop IKEA boxes containing a small, red ottoman and a set of birch stools.

2:25 p.m.

The fig man has prepared me an Italian pastry. His name is Zach.

“It’s a maritozzi,” he says, cursing as he slices the brioche bun too deep, severing it in two. He lays the halves on a plate and layers fig jam and fresh whipped cream between them, thick and silky. He tops it with a slice of fig.

“Thank you,” I say, accepting the plate.

“You’ll have to eat it here. Too messy to take with you on the road.”

We chit-chat while I tear off chunks of sweet, creamy brioche and stuff them into my mouth. Zach shows me his tattoo of a man drowning himself in a birdbath (“It’s an inside joke between me and my mom,” he says). We discuss Wim Café, an extension of Yowie on 2nd and South, and the ube maritozzi that inspired him to bake his own.

When it’s time for me to go, Zach hands me a Ziploc bag and two small cartons of figs, as well as a Tupperware containing a slice of latticed fig pie. I realize, with a heaviness that surprises me, that fig season is coming to an end.

Figure 3: My beautiful plants. Figure 4: Zach’s biblically accurate fig maritozzi.

2:41 p.m.

August’s cry is so pitiful that it nearly brings me to tears. I’m seated on Mike’s floor for the second time today, rubbing him gently between the eyes. He meows again, and I glance up at Mike in disbelief.

“There’s no way,” I say to him.

The sound is achingly pathetic—tiny and anguished, as if August is singlehandedly shouldering the burden of all the world’s suffering.

Mike has spent the day, and many weeks before it, practicing for tonight’s event. He and his friend are the sole members of Bullshit Lit’s house band, tasked with the flawless execution of a walk-on and walk-off song for each of the eighteen readers participating in its third anthology launch at First Unitarian Church. I don’t ask if he’s nervous. I see that my mirror has been hung on the wall.

4:16 p.m.

Late to my nail appointment. My car is parked in a metered zone, which means that I risk being towed if a PPA officer tickets me again. I spend the next forty-five minutes swiveling in my seat, neck craned for a glimpse of a tow truck. Fortunately, my vehicle escapes unscathed, and I exit the salon with long, ovular acrylics in the color “red spice.” The dracaena is still strapped into my passenger seat like a toddler locked in a hot car. Despite, this, I could be a good mother. I know it.

4:45 p.m.

The contractors have procured the right drill bit.

“Got it,” they say, shuffling up the stairs.

5:20 p.m.

I stir an Emergen-C into my glass of ice water and suck it up through a straw with the speed and precision of a neurosurgeon excising a brain aneurysm. My energy is waning. I refresh my makeup, I oil my curls, and I spritz Dossier’s Ambery Vanilla on my wrists and the back of my neck. My flats match my nails. I survey the contents of my bag: lipstick, lip gloss, concealer, earbuds, crumpled receipt, lighter, cigarettes, two dusty sticks of Trident.

Figure 5: Mike holding August. Figure 6: Me and my fresh manicure.

6:22 p.m.

The Lyft scoops Matt before me. Graham is biking; he’ll meet us at Wilder. Graham and Matt have never spent time together in an intimate setting, but I imagine they’ll mesh. Usually, Sebastian would be joining us, but he’s in New York until Friday. Sebastian lives 223 feet away from me. We have a Kramer and Jerry dynamic in which we are both George. The best way to describe our relationship is that I’m his emergency contact.

Someone named Mary Butz just called our driver, Matt texts. Then, a few minutes later: She’s got wedding dance floor music playing on the radio btw.

6:39 p.m.

Matt and I buy a round of Negronis. We slurp them up greedily, kvetching about our woes and ailments until Graham’s arrival. He’s slick with sweat, bangs matted to his forehead, bike helmet bouncing against the side of his backpack.

We each order a different pasta and take bites of them all. Although my bucatini cacio e pepe is the saltiest, it is arguably the best dish of the evening. We debate oysters, but it’s not a month that ends with “R.” Graham nurses a nonalcoholic margarita and brings up the failed Hegelian e-girl party. I confess how little I know about philosophy, and how this has always felt like a personal failing rather than a lack of interest in theory. Over dessert, we discuss fiction and practice and MFAs and Matt’s violinist boyfriend, David, dubbed “David Grubbs David” because he once opened for David Grubbs. My amaro is delightfully rich; it coats my mouth, and I run my tongue over each slippery tooth. We get the check.

Figure 7: One of the two desserts we split between us at Wilder. Figure 8: Graham and his coffee.

8:20 p.m.

We walk a quarter mile in the wrong direction and then hightail it back down 22nd Street.

Veronica is Bullshit’s masthead. They are presenting a reader on stage at First Unitarian, clipboard in hand. Mike plays twenty seconds of Modern English’s “I Melt With You” as the reader fields their way through the crowd. Graham, Matt, and I hover near the entrance. I’m standing to the left of Molly, the organizer of the “A Year in Philadelphia” project, and I consider the sweet irony of encountering her here, today of all days.

Graham fishes around in his backpack for water. Matt stifles a yawn; he’s been awake since four o’clock in the morning.

A break is announced after the first nine performances. I regard myself as a social smoker, but even then, I barely qualify. I perch on a concrete ledge and light a second cigarette, Graham and Matt flanked on either side of me. Minutes later, Mike emerges, wide-eyed and buzzing with adrenaline. He greets Graham and takes a moment to place Matt, eventually identifying him as the partner of “David Grubbs David.” He declines a cigarette and bounds back down into the bowels of the church. Matt, fading rapidly, bids us farewell.

Audrey materializes from the ether, congratulatory bouquet tucked into the crook of her arm. She’s wearing a long dress. We hug, and I ask her to assure us that we didn’t miss her reading. Mercifully, she’s on second-to-last.

Graham and Audrey have a conversation about low mass at St. Mark’s. I mention that I’d gone to mass on Christmas Eve sixteen years ago. I was overwhelmed by all the kneeling. I ask them how the eucharist tastes, and they explain to me that it is sort of like a rice cracker if a rice cracker had no flavor at all. I make a face.

Veronica introduces herself to me. We are longtime mutuals with an array of overlapping friends. Soon, she’s swept away to mingle with the other attendees. Graham and Audrey disappear. For the first time in twelve hours, I am alone.

I make my way down the winding stone steps, phone cradled close to my chest. Unsure what else to do, I text Sebastian, who confirms that he is having a nice time in New York. I kill five minutes in the bathroom, zhuzhing my hair, wiping away dark clots of mascara that have migrated under my eyes.

I look fatigued and unglamorous. I think about a line from Rene Ricard: “How do I live? I haven’t a clue.”

The rest of the reading passes with minimal incident. Between sets, Graham and I gossip in hushed tones. We sink to the ground, our backs pressed against the wood-paneled walls, and we remain there until it’s Audrey’s turn to read “Sandwich Exotica,” at which point we clamber to our feet and cheer.

Figure 7: Audrey holding her bouquet outside of First Unitarian. Figure 8: Reading in-progress.

10:42 p.m.

The night draws to a close with a charming rendition of “Just a Girl” by No Doubt. When Graham and I surface, it’s dark and cool outside, wavering on the cusp of fall after a summer heatwave so brutal and oppressive that it seems to have lasted my whole life. It occurs to me, with a pang of abject terror, that this is the last August of my twenties.

Graham asks if I’m nervous.

“For what?”

“You know, the end of your day.”

The thought gnaws at me. In the Uber home, I listen to Impasse by Allegra Krieger. My therapist recommended I utilize bilateral tapping as a tool to combat nerves, so I sequentially tap each shoulder, the streetlights blurring as we pick up speed.

Someday soon, we’ll rеach the impasse, she croons. And all you know will be leaving you, fast.

11:06 p.m.

The house is balmy. Junie coils herself around my shins. I march up the stairs, kick off my shoes, park myself at the foot of the bed, and dig the heels of my palms into my eye sockets so hard that I see stars. When my vision is restored, I finally look around the room.

Plants. New and alive.

Ava is a writer, poet, and amateur cook living in Philadelphia, PA. She can most often be found hiding in the bathroom at her own dinner parties. She is, unfortunately, @wownicebuttdude on Twitter.