Jade Sharma - Problems

There used to be this D.A.R.E. commercial where this woman walked in a circle and kept muttering, “I have to do drugs so I can work so I can make money so I can do drugs so I can work. .”

Where the fuck was bottom?

Elizabeth thought it was bullshit that I complained about my father. “At least you had him growing up,” she said. There are no competitions for pain because no one can be objective. We all have our own private hells. Mine was a father who showed no interest in my existence. That’s a hard problem to have because the precise problem is the absence of problems.

When I was a kid, I literally thought his name was “Dad.”

But then I asked myself, Who would I be if my father was a great dad? What if what drove us — our sexual habits, our ambitions, our talents — all stemmed from someone not hugging us when we were kids? The best parts of us developed from overcompensating for something we weren’t given. They say ugly girls have to develop a personality. Whatever hole was made when we were kids is the same size as our ambition and need for attention. So is it better to be interesting but damaged, or mediocre but stable? At NYU there were students with parents who were so encouraging it seemed to verge on another type of abuse, giving their children unfounded confidence in anything they put their sticky hands on for five minutes. This one girl told me how her parents had her read her stories during dinner, and they would all applaud.

My parents had thought I was an idiot. They had treated my interest in writing as a symptom of my failure to grasp reality. “You’re so smart. You could have gotten an MBA,” my mother said.

There was a knock. Elizabeth opened the door, and Noah stuck his head in. “All right, I’m going to go get some crack. You want some?”

“Here,” Elizabeth said, handing him a fifty.

“My kids are everything to me,” Candy said for the millionth time. “They are the whole reason I’m alive.” Then, “You have beautiful hair.” She was so skanky. Someone should have put a cock in her mouth, if only to shut her up. But she probably wouldn’t. She would probably babble some incoherent shit even while you fucked her. I wanted to throw up.

“I need to lie down,” I said to no one. I went back to the bedroom, crashed on the bed.

Fuck dope. Methadone was the new frontier. Only three bucks a pill. I leaned back against the wall. Hole up in the apartment. Should just stay good and fucked up. Get real junkie skinny lying with my lovely hip bones sticking out of my dirty jeans. Some man I don’t even know yet can curve his hand into my pants. Stay wet all the time. Read all I want in my room without having to think of dumb things to say about it. When I’m king. Jump in the ocean. Let the water go up my nose, I don’t care. Drive Upstate with the windows down. Go fuck in a little tent. Pull weeds out of the ground. Drink beer. Pick at the label. Go for a drive. Park on the side of the road. Stare at the stars.

I woke up with dried drool all over my mouth and a craving for chocolate ice cream.

Elizabeth was lying next to me with her eyes closed, a lit cigarette between her lips. Night of the living dead. I took the cigarette and put it out.

“It’s been real,” I said as I passed Candy taking a piss on the toilet. She gave me a Courtney Love face, half-closed eyes with a lipstick smear.

High. Walked down the street like I had a cock. Like the city was my bitch, and I was fucking it in the ass. You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine .

I walked into the front door, and it slammed behind me. The apartment was quiet and dark. I had managed to walk past a million bodegas. Big crinkly bags of kettle chips and chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream. The only thing at home was peach yogurt.

I went back out to the bodega. Just to look , I thought. Maybe a candy bar. Something that wouldn’t make me feel guilty. I tried hard to remember the envy I felt staring at Elizabeth’s beautiful, tiny thighs. How her body looked so perfect and clean, and mine looked sloppy and messy. I always thought I was doing okay until I spent time around her and realized I was nowhere close to being thin.

It was smarter to buy a pint of ice cream, but I knew what started as a few spoonfuls would end with an empty pint and a sick feeling. There were granola bars with chocolate chips and peanut butter. The thought of more granola. . I knew this was dangerous territory, and this could spiral into a need for a treat every night, then pints of ice cream every day, and it would be gross.

I bought a Snickers ice cream bar. The chocolate broke into pieces and released the creamy vanilla ice cream. There was nougat and the swirl of caramel. The first taste was a dull sensation of sugar. At first you think, What’s all the fuss about? But then you find yourself wanting to go back and remember all the tastes: the salty nuts, the white cream, the thick caramel, the soft nougat, all mixed together. What exactly was nougat?

They should have girls with eating disorders do commercials for food.

I ate all but one bite and threw it in the garbage. There was a strong desire to take it right back out and finish it.

I found my phone, but it was dead. I found a charger, but then I realized it was Peter’s. So where’s mine? All this technology, and you end up like a caveman, hunched over, trying to figure out what plugs into what.

If I called Ogden, he would be pissed off. It pissed him off to hear about my feelings. He kept me chained a million miles from his heart, and when I cried, he thought, See, this is why I keep her chained so far away .

He could be cold as fuck. Sometimes I cried and his eyes turned to these points of endless apathy, like, “Go ahead and fucking die.”

Peter was too stupid to take care of me, and Ogden was too fucked-up. I would be middle-aged soon, and who in the world wanted to be with a middle-aged woman?

I called Ogden. He didn’t pick up. The blurry images of him with another girl. A blurry girl with long brown hair and fresh white skin and tits with huge areolas. Opening her legs. I kept calling. I cried into his voicemail. I shouted into his voicemail. I sounded like a child. I sounded like someone you might not want to call back right away. Where is a good emergency when you actually need one?

When men stop wanting to fuck you: Poof! You disappear.

I took three Xanaxes and watched Bob’s Burgers on my laptop till I passed out on the couch.

* * *

“We’re going to be late,” Peter said. It was twenty past seven. We had to be at Penn Station at eight.

“It’s not going to take forty minutes in a cab,” I said.

“There are no cabs.”

“There’ll be one, just wait.” The wind blew in my face. My head hurt. Why did I ever agree to go to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving? I cursed the past me, the one who hadn’t considered what the present me would have to go through.

The past me was always fucking with the present me. Like agreeing to go jogging at nine in the morning, like agreeing to help people move, like making doctor’s appointments at eight o’clock. Thinking naively, “It will be good for me to start the day early.” But when the day finally arrived for whatever, that past me with too-high expectations for myself had totally fucked present me.

The psychiatrist had given me Suboxone. Suboxone was the new methadone. Like methadone, it blocked dope, but Suboxone took longer to leave your system. You could see people nodding outside methadone clinics. Suboxone never did that. It didn’t give you a real high like methadone, but it was something. It felt like you had drunk an entire pot of coffee and then took some shitty speed.

“Maya,” Peter started, but then a yellow cab with lights on turned the corner and I was saved from whatever tangent he was about to go on.