BooksBarbecue
Back You Exist Too Much Save as PDF
Chapters (23)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter 1
  4. Chapter 2
  5. Chapter 3
  6. Chapter 4
  7. Chapter 5
  8. Chapter 6
  9. Chapter 7
  10. Chapter 8
  11. Chapter 9
  12. Chapter 10
  13. Chapter 11
  14. Chapter 12
  15. Chapter 13
  16. Chapter 14
  17. Chapter 15
  18. Chapter 16
  19. Chapter 17
  20. Chapter 18
  21. Chapter 19
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. About the Author

Only now, years later, do I think I understand. It was in that moment that she first realized: I wasn’t like her. The trousers were a demarcation line, one that separated me from my mother and her lineage.

I wonder sometimes if that day was the start of something. Whether it’s when I began this habit of constant seeking, of endlessly striving to earn my way back, a pattern that would send me on a misguided and self-destructive quest for love. I communicated something to my mother as I stood there smiling in a pair of men’s pants, a message I didn’t know I was sending her. She has always known first what I have yet to discover, has always seen it before I could.

Look at me, I wanted to say to her then. Please don’t look away.

Chapter 1

1

I WOKE UP ALONE ONE MORNING WHEN I WAS TWENTY-SIX. Anna had left for the day. Her side was already made, to the extent that half a bed can be: the comforter pulled up over her pillow, sheets crumpled underneath. She’d opened the curtains before leaving, knowing I liked to be woken by sunlight. She was always finding solutions for things I preferred to simply complain about. Though it was finally bright out, I felt the usual pang of dread. “Your death hour,” my best friend, Renata, liked to call it. “Seems normal.”

I looked at the cat clock that Anna had brought with her when she moved in, the calico tail twitching: it was nine fifteen. Early, given that I’d spun a double set the night before and taken a lot of tequila shots to stay fueled. Anna had an afternoon class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, meaning she’d still be at the café beneath our building. I then reached to the surface of the nightstand for my grad school acceptance letter. I’d gotten into an MFA program for writing in the Midwest. It was the deadline to send in my decision.

I lay there for a few moments willing myself to get up before finally tossing off the sheets and swinging my legs off the bed in one swift motion. I pressed my feet to the cold hardwood and walked to the kitchen, which was an extension of the same room, only the flooring different, linoleum instead of wood. I touched my hand to the silver coffeepot—still relatively warm. Anna must’ve just left; I had only just missed her. Lately I’d been trying to make a point of waking up earlier. Renata had suggested it a few weeks ago: “Maybe your girlfriend would like to see you in daylight, from time to time? Wouldn’t that help things?”