That summer I was seeing this guy who was writing a screenplay. Only he wasn’t writing a screenplay he was just online gambling.

At the same time, I was seeing this guy who was polyamorous and who was writing a novel, only he wasn’t writing a novel because he was too busy dating four different girls, and I wasn’t really seeing him because of all the other girls.

He spent his time sitting in parks reading books about ethical non-monogamy and how to be an ethical slut. I told him I’d prefer unethical non-monogamy. I said I’d rather be the other woman than someone’s ethical side bitch, because at least then I could feel sad when he wasn’t with me and angry when he didn’t call me. I said it’s like people created a system of cheating that makes it so no one’s allowed to get mad about it. He said it wasn’t like that at all.

I was seeing an older man who was a doctor. A plastic surgeon. He did breast augmentation for low grade stars like Instagram models who sold weight loss supplements and the Real Housewives. He made some of the best fake titties that you’ve ever seen, some of the realest. 

Every morning he drinks a skim milk decaf latte from Dunkin’ Donuts. It has to be decaf and it has to be from Dunkin’. If his assistant doesn’t bring him one first thing he calls the office manager at his practice and says he didn’t feel the love. I said what gets you through the day, if you’re drinking decaf, and he said tequila.

After him, I started seeing Joe. Joe was a DJ. He’d DJ at clubs in Bushwick on Tuesday nights and all these parties in Chinatown hosted by people with high paying jobs in corporate offices who wanted to feel different. We all wanted to feel different but we weren’t.

On our first date we met at bar in the city and drank too much. I’d cooked that night before we went out. I made salmon and vegetables and baked them in butter. I wanted to feel like a domestic woman, like the kind of woman who made salmon and vegetables before going out. Then I was that woman because I’d tried to be her. I placed her inside the other women I’d tried to be, a woman inside a woman inside many women.

After I ate I washed my face. I prepped my skin with serums and creams and then I did my makeup. I pat concealer into the skin beneath my eyes with my ring finger and then I drew dark circles around them with a charcoal pencil where the dark circles already had been before I covered them. I smudged the lines with a tiny brush. I plucked stray hairs around my eyebrows and put on lip gloss that stings to make my lips look bigger and then I overlined them.

I used to watch my grandmother get ready for the day. If she’d had more money she would’ve gotten Botox and filler and laser treatments. Frozen the muscles around her mouth and her eyes and plumped up her cheeks and her chin. Instead she did what she could with what she had. Wore bright coral lipstick and eyeliner, blue like her eyes, and boxed hair dye in the shade sunset lover.

She wore high patent leather heels every day no matter where she went. When she got arthritis, her doctor said to switch to orthopedics, but she kept on wearing her heels until she couldn’t walk. “Beauty is pain,” she used to say. But that’s not true. The beauty’s in the work, not the pain. Never the pain. 

I was seeing this guy who was pretty normal. He was sweet to me and cooked me dinner. We went together to see this play in an apartment in the West Village. He said the play was clouted. I said it was retarded. I said it felt like one big circle jerk, like everything else does. He said we could’ve done something worse, like we could be those people eating dinner at the Smith on a Friday night, and I said eating dinner at the Smith on a Friday night might actually be the most avant-garde thing you could possibly do in this godforsaken fucking city.

We fucked four times that night. The next morning at brunch I told my friend this guy fucked me four times in one night. I said I didn’t know you guys could do that, and he said sometimes you have to just put numbers on the board.

I was seeing a boy who boxed on the weekends. I called him Boxing Boy. He was moving to Los Angeles. On our last night together I asked about his family. He said his father had been to prison for a couple years and that he’s a raging alcoholic. He said his mother never drinks. He said he misses his ex-girlfriend. They broke up eight months ago. He asked me when it will end and I said I didn’t know.

He said he wants to move out West to be closer to his sister and that he’s addicted to coke and an alcoholic like his father and he needs to leave the city. I said I think they still have cocaine in LA. He started singing Bubbly by Colbie Callait while he put his socks on. I’d been listening to that song all week and I told him it felt like a sign. He asked me what it was a sign of but I didn’t know that either.

I peel oranges every morning. I only eat them sometimes. I like the way they stick to me, the way the rinds build up beneath my fingernails so my hands smell sweet even once I’ve washed them.

Once as a child I bit this boy who took my blocks. We were at church in the nursery and I was building a castle. He joined the Army when he turned eighteen, but it was too late to be in any real war. He served his time then I got older.