<\/p>\n
Natasha flipped her head back, trying to get her glossy black hair to move.<\/p>\n
“See, it’s not moving.” She mumbled.<\/p>\n
She had it hanging over her left eye in a weird faux 80’s
\ntease. With Nat, it was never a throwback fashion, it was something
\nelse. As if she had tripped forward a few years and come back with the
\nlatest fad.<\/p>\n
She flipped her head again, the hair unmoving. “See?”<\/p>\n
“Maybe,” I said, “you could comb the hairspray out of it or something?”<\/p>\n
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “You
\ndon’t understand anything, do you Nach? The space between us is empty.”
\nShe threw herself back onto the bed, arms splayed out, and began
\nscreaming, “Empty! Empty!”<\/p>\n
“Nat, please,”<\/p>\n
She rolled off the bed, still screaming, and tore open the closet
\ndoors. Then, as calm as she could be, she looked over her shoulder and
\nasked, “Dress or slacks?”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
“Quick now, boy! Dress or slacks?”<\/p>\n
“Well, I…”<\/p>\n
“Do you like my knees?”<\/p>\n
“Your knees?”<\/p>\n
“Do you like them?”<\/p>\n
“I’ve never really…”<\/p>\n
“Fine. Be that way.” She ripped clothes off of hangers until she had an
\narmful of black and trailing belts, then she stomped off into the
\nbathroom. I returned to a gentle ride through the blankness of middle
\nspace, attempting to pull myself together. March had been an exhausting
\nmonth, and I was feeling a distance between myself and the world. I’d
\nfinished a novel and piled the writing plate pretty high. It was more
\nthan a challenge to roll through these things when there was still life
\nto worry about. Dayjobs and friends, family and sickness,
\nresponsibilities and madness. Creating a novel kind of gives you a clue
\nas to why God even had to say fuck it and go to the pub on the 7th day.<\/p>\n
I’m surprised my friends had bothered to stick around, but they were
\nstarting to give me some space. The writing they don’t understand, but
\nthe fallout makes perfect sense. It’s akin to depression, in that all
\nthings must stop. My own 7th day. Nat had maintained her ground, of
\ncourse, as she was always involved in these things. But her mood often
\nreflected mine, which wasn’t always a productive situation. She
\nadvocated more work, never stop, always write. Finish one, start the
\nother. Advice I had given others always thrown back in my direction.
\nWrite the second novel before the first is even sold, if it’s sold, if
\nI can write, if all this works out.<\/p>\n
“You’re far too sensitive,” Natasha said from the bathroom. She was
\nnude. She’d gone in there to pretend at being modest, but she hadn’t
\nbothered closing the door. Everything’s just for show. Watch from the
\nright angle, and Nat’s a modest girl. Watch from the front row and
\nyou’ve got another thing coming.<\/p>\n
“What?” I’m never sure what she’s talking about when she opens up a conversation like this.<\/p>\n
“That old debate,” she pointed at me, the harsh mirror light pouring
\nacross her pale flesh, her small body in profile. You don’t look at her
\nass or her tits when she’s looking at you. You look at those eyes, that
\nqueer unblinking glare that she puts on. She clicked her tongue,
\n“You’re thinking it,”<\/p>\n
I was. I was thinking about the friends and co-workers and
\nacquaintances that surround me, all of us slowly crawling into age and
\nthe realizations of adulthood. I was thinking about criticism, all the
\nthings I’ve been told. I’m arrogant, aristocratic, on the wrong path,
\nrude, obsessed with despair, doom, death. I’m depressed, anti-social,
\ndismissive. I’m a pessimist. It seems that every time I get together
\nwith people these days, I hear something along those lines. Why don’t I
\nget a writing-related job? What am I doing? There’s no defense, either.
\nI used to try and tell them that a writing-related job is death for the
\ncreative writer. That doesn’t make sense. Writing doesn’t make sense.
\nHell, it doesn’t make sense to me. I only do it because I’ve always
\ndone it, because –<\/p>\n
“Hey,” Nat shouted out, “Why do all the Girl Scouts on the cookie boxes look like retards?”<\/p>\n
I looked at her standing there, still nude, as she gazed at a purple bra.<\/p>\n
“Do they?”<\/p>\n
“They do.” She threw the bra over her shoulder into the bathtub.
\n“Anyway, back to your meandering, incoherent and dangerously childlike
\nthoughts, my dear Mr. Sasha. There’s one lesson for you to grasp.” She
\nspun to stand in the door, raising her hands over her head and pressing
\nagainst the frame, “Your family is so good at being a group of
\nhard-core weirdoes, I’m dying to know where you got your
\nhypersensitivity from. Because you’re an only child? Because you should
\nhave been born female? I don’t know, but you waste too much of your
\nlife stuck on what your little friends say. Do you ever wonder if half
\nthe people you hang out with only stick with you because they like to
\nhave a whipping boy around? Because they’re big old balls of pathetic
\nthat enjoy hoodwinking you?”<\/p>\n
There’s a lesson I should take to heart, something that’s been told to
\nme by just about every family member and true friend. Something Natasha
\nis about to quote back to me.<\/p>\n
“If someone criticizes you it’s because they are doubly guilty of the same thing.”<\/p>\n
That comes from my grandfather’s side of the family. My grandmother
\nsays, if someone criticizes you, you should lash them to a tree and
\nwhip them. But she grew up in the deep mountains and they have
\ndifferent rules. I’ve always tried to play the jolly friend. Someone
\nsays I’m too pessimistic and I launch into self mockery, playing up the
\npessimism, and they love it. Those glass house people eat it up. Then
\nthey come to Greatsociety, read the latest Nacho adventure and, it
\nseems, they take notes for next time. I’ll see them again and they’ll
\nquote back articles to me – did you really drink yourself sick at 8am?
\nDid you really kill that hooker in Vegas? Did you really… Every word
\nwritten taken for absolute truth.<\/p>\n
The family teaching that says people who criticize are sick and wrong
\nalso dictates that I don’t criticize back. I maintain cordial support
\nof every stupid, misguided, diseased life choice they make. A friend is
\nsupportive in every way, I’ve been taught, so I sit and take it.<\/p>\n
Of course, these days, the situation is a bit more clear. Most people
\nwho criticize me are taking a dangerous and terrifying cocktail of mood
\nenhancement drugs that do nothing, really, but give them diarrhea,
\nsexual dysfunction and make them depressed. Ever notice that? The
\npeople taking drugs for depression are depressed because they’re taking
\nthe drugs?<\/p>\n
“How come all the people who take medication for being crazy are crazier than normal crazy folk?” I asked out loud.<\/p>\n
Natasha had vanished into the bathroom closet, but she answered
\nquickly, “Big kickback for all those drugs. Get on them, lose your mind
\nand self identity, lie on the floor with a limp dick and bloody piss
\nand your doctor gets a 20% bonus.” She poked her head out around the
\ndoor, “Proven fact. The kickback.”<\/p>\n
“So, criticism.” I said, “Why am I so sensitive? Why do I care?”<\/p>\n
“Because you’re a whining bitch?” Nat slammed the closet door. “And
\nbecause you’re out of aspirin.” She pressed her hands to her lower
\nbelly, “Oh, the pain, the pain!” Then she laughed cruelly. “Let’s look
\nat a slice of Nacho Sasha, the man, the legend, the disturbingly
\nflippant sexist.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, let’s.”<\/p>\n
“For those who have an enormous amount of free time to read thousands
\nof pages of your poorly structured rants spread over the last three
\nyears, it’s pretty clear that you live a wild life. Whether or not they
\ndoubt the existence of, say, me, they know you’re a world traveler with
\nan international network of friends off of whom you can freeload
\nliberally. They know you’ve put your body through the wringer –
\nshattered elbows, broken wrists, speeding Cadillac’s, dislocated knees,
\njaws caved in. They know you’ve lived through chronic nerve pain,
\nwalked on the wrong side of town on three continents and have been
\nchased by construction workers, Satanists, military police and mounted
\nState troopers. You’ve walked in on black masses, fallen through the
\nfloors of abandoned buildings and been washed down sluice pipes. You’ve
\njumped three stories into a snow drift, buried loved ones and committed
\ncountless deviant sex acts with a string of insane women.<\/p>\n
“So love, death, sex, horror, adventure. To the majority of folks
\ncoming by your darling little page, it’s just a story. But those \u2018close
\nfriends’ who always have a comment about your lifestyle, well, they’re
\njust envious. You’ve earned your doom and despair. The proper way.
\nConstructively and with real human experience.”<\/p>\n
“Wow, Nat. Been working on that one?”<\/p>\n
She grinned, “I like to read Natasha Gives A Pep Talk segments in your
\narticles. It makes me look like a power player in your life. Now come
\nhere and comb out this hair spray.”<\/p>\n
So my despair, which seems to be a recent thing, is rooted in one
\nthing. This is my realization. That all the people who call me a
\npessimist have lived slow lives and are part of a great Generation of
\nFear which makes Nazi Germany look like a good time. Now there’s a
\ntopic for an article which, one of these days, I might get around to
\nwriting.<\/p>\n
Natasha let her head be pulled back as I ran a comb through her black
\nhair. Her eyes looked up at my face but, this time, I stared at her
\nbody in the mirror.<\/p>\n
“You’re about to have an episode, aren’t you?” She asked.<\/p>\n
“I’ve earned it, yes?”<\/p>\n
“No. I don’t think I meant that.”<\/p>\n
“Hold still.”<\/p>\n
“Nacho, it’s just another day. Write me an article where I give you
\nthat pep talk, and don’t use my voice. Don’t use all that bad language
\nI used or the silly tangents. Boil it down to the basic thing, and just
\nwrite it for yourself.”<\/p>\n
And then she did it again.<\/p>\n
“My voice is yours,” she said, “You’d think you’d start to get the hint by now.”<\/p>\n
“The comb’s stuck in your hair.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,367],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-natasha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2869,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions\/2869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}