Illustration by Christian Gralingen

One looked like a woman but was too tall, or maybe it was just that the other one was so small, like a little boy. I saw them around Portland all the time that summer. Were they young or old? Couldn’t tell. Were they from the present, or another era; i.e., time-travellers? Wasn’t sure. They were in black and white, neckties and knickers. A little dirty. Always leaning on each other.

Their house was the one with the big wooden sign on the porch—a blue finger pointing thataway. I began to hang around. Not comfortably or with any panache—I just couldn’t seem to stay away from the finger, and those strange people, especially the little one, TV. She, if she was a she, was every boy from every childhood book: Christopher Robin, Huck Finn, Gilbert Blythe in “Anne of Green Gables.” I had searched for these boys in real life, but they always turned out to be assholes. Here, finally, was one who really understood the magic of boyishness, from a girl’s point of view: snub-nosed, gallant, and full of aw shucks. She also had a kind of enormous Misfits tattoo on her arm.

Usually I just sat on their porch swing, hoping the right one would come out. One evening, the taller one sat down and looked me over, her whiskery face narrowing. I was wearing the swimsuit of an obese lady from the twenties; it hung from my shoulders like a floppy barrel.

“Are you scamming on my girlfriend?” she asked flatly.

My face turned red; I felt slapped. And awakened. They were girlfriends. And I could be, too. My lust was catalyzed with a silent boom.

“No,” I whispered.

My college break ended; I went back to California and pined for TV, day in, day out. A full year passed. Then one night Bikini Kill came through town—and guess who their roadie was? She was single now. When the band rolled on, TV stayed—in a grand apartment. She’d been hired to paint the living room yellow; another girl and I volunteered to help. I still have pictures from that night, from the hours and then minutes before our consummation. I’m wearing a drum-majorette uniform; TV looks like a newsie. The friend is too cute; I was worried about that. But, in the end, the cute friend slept on the couch and it was I who shared the queen bed with TV. We lay like chaste logs, apart and awake. After about forty-five minutes, I very, very, VERY slowly sent my hand on the long trek across the sheets. My fingers grazed her arm. In an instant she whipped around and pulled me to her.

I’m pretty sure I overcompensated for my lack of experience. I may have fisted her. I did. I fisted her as if I fisted vaginas every day of the week and twice on Sundays. It was probably awful for her. We kissed a lot. In the morning I awoke with a new understanding of life. Pain and loneliness were in the past now: I had someone.

I tried to go back to college—but why? Why do something that makes you miserable when you could have exquisite joy every second? By Christmas, I had dropped out and was living with TV in Portland.

It wasn’t an easy life. We didn’t have money or health insurance, and I had problems with my eyes. Also, TV and her friends never let me forget how sexist, classist, and racist I was. It was inherent, and anything I might say in my defense only proved my guilt. I cried a lot and made sure to lob the same accusations at my parents. Every relationship dynamic was brand-new to me; when TV needed some alone time, I had to try really hard not to die of sadness. When I needed alone time, I questioned her value as a human. Maybe I had been brainwashed, maybe everyone in a couple is brainwashed—is it better to resist or to give in and perhaps lose your soul? That kind of thing. But we would always be together, obviously. We were part of a feminist revolution. We were in a band with our housemate, Carla. We had built a recording studio in our basement. We were on the cusp of radicalizing everything.

TV broke up with me in a van, right before we stepped into a party. I was crying too hard to go in, so I just stayed there, incoherent with disbelief. She moved back in with her grandparents, who had brought her up. I took three buses to get to their house, only to stand silently in front of her, tears streaming, before walking back to the bus stop. The idea of playing it cool had simply not been introduced to me at this juncture. TV had conceived me, given birth to me, and now she was abandoning me, before I even knew how to walk or care for myself.

Meanwhile, Carla and I were having trouble paying our rent. As far as we could see, the only solution was for one of us to go downtown immediately, strip, and come back with some cash.

“It can’t be me, because I wear glasses,” Carla said, pointing to her face. It was true, I had never seen a stripper with glasses. Or a stripper, for that matter. Taking my clothes off for money didn’t really solve anything, but it gave me some external obstacles that passed the time. I moved into a tiny studio and Carla moved next door, into a much bigger and more wonderful corner apartment. I was jealous of my friend, but the worst was yet to come.

“I want to fuck Heather” was how she put it. Not TV, but my true love’s real name. (I’ve changed the names here.)

“Do you love her?” I asked, trembling.

“Not yet.”

But love was coming. Before long, TV moved in with Carla, and we shared a wall. My eye condition had worsened; I couldn’t go outside in daylight now. So I lay in bed, high on stolen Vicodin, Portishead throbbing in my Walkman. It was never loud enough to block out their inconceivably loud sex. It sounded as though they were hitting each other with a stick. And in fact, when they finally moved out and I stumbled into the beautiful, vacant corner apartment, there were just three objects left behind: two wineglasses and a bamboo cane. I threw them in a dumpster. It was my apartment now. I traced the entire perimeter of my new home with one finger while chanting the lyrics to what would become my first album. It was a spell of self-protection; this space was just for me and the furious, jaw-dropping, vengeful art I planned to make in it. Now I was ready to begin. ♦