Dear America

Content Warnings: Suicide; Queerphobia

“You know what it’ll be like? It’ll be like waking in the middle of night in a pool of your own blood. When you’re twelve and when they don’t tell you it’ll hurt like hell. When they soften the blow of your monthlies because oh no, it’s too graphic to tell the kiddos the truth. When the clock strikes midnight sometime in the not-so-distant-future and your eyes fly open and you scream for your mother, clutching your stomach, because something is really fucking wrong. And your mother is late, but she comes, smooths your hair down, and she brings the painkillers. It’ll be over. Until it happens again three weeks later,” I said with a cigarette dangling from my mouth, lips shaped into a wolfish grin. I'd been practicing that analogy for far too long, and I was quite pleased with myself. 

“That’s what it’ll be like, friend.”

"God. No need for the gory details. Once a theater brat, always a theater brat."

"So you agree to the proposal?"

My former roommate stood with her back to me. The kitchenette lighting, shrouded in stifling gray wallpaper, elongated her slender figure and illuminated the tension she was carrying. I'd never known her light and care-free. She'd always held a weight on her shoulders, and that was no different tonight, on the ninth anniversary of our estrangement. 

God. So much had happened. 

"I didn't say that."

"Come on. I promise that we'll have fun." I rose from the red sofa, where allegedly, a pope had once graced with his presence. I liked to sprinkle the ashes from my smokes into its folds and crevices whenever I remembered that fact. "We were invincible in our college days."

"Yes, back then. But we aren't those people anymore."

"Yeah, you're right. You're much duller." 

I walked around the cramped space to meet her calculating gaze. Dozens of questions remained obscure behind her eyes, past my reach. We were cut from the same cloth, Erica and me. Which was how I knew this was going to work. "But thank the heavens for that. And look. You owe me anyway, after what happened with Charlie."

"Like hell I do!" she said, her expression shattering its mask of apathy. "I apologized at dinner. And I apologized back then, too, but you never accepted it."

"You didn't even recognize me until halfway through the date. Then came the stuttered apologies," I said, but it wasn't an entirely fair statement. I'd changed my name. I'd chopped off half my hair. I'd tattooed myself in a vain attempt to find myself. My piercings were loud and defiant—so utterly opposite of my brief spell in academia, in which I played the perfect friend, daughter, student. 

Something dark and twisted churned inside me. I hadn't liked Erica's defensiveness on the date, and I didn't like it now. She was still trying to act the victim. And with her doe eyes, with her platinum blonde curls and wrinkle-less skin, I was convinced she'd never missed a day of sleep since the event had happened. 

"If we do this…"

"We're in it for the long haul," I confirmed as I leaned against her sparse pantry. "And all will be forgiven."

She tilted her head and flashed her pearly whites. It was a smile I'd been familiar with, once upon a time ago. Now, those sharp canines seemed hungry.

"I doubt that very much. You and your vendettas and all."

"Hah. I could say the same about you and your love affairs. America the Beautiful, indeed."

"I don't want to hear that joke again," Erica said. Her eyes flashed with tempered rage, the kind that she'd been hiding for far too long. 

"Fine by me." And I silently recited it again in my head. 

We walked out of America's flat together a few moments later. I smiled to myself and grabbed her cold, motionless hands in my own palms. I couldn't believe my luck. 

***

"How lucky we are today for this visit! And how long have you two been dating?"

The question came from my parents, who stood in front of their one-story home, the dog at their feet. It was summertime and the lawn was sickening green, not a single blade of grass out of place. The white picket fence had been replaced. Gone was the peeling paint. Gone were the shards of rotting wood that I'd once enjoyed tearing off to construct homes for the squirrels in the backyard. 

We were at a standstill. They stared at America. America stared back. 

How long since I'd seen them, exactly? I didn't remember.

"For months now, Mum," I said, maintaining my cheerful persona. "May we come in? I smell dinner from here.”

My mother blinked, as if waking from a bad dream, as if she'd just remembered where she was. She nodded with enthusiasm. "Of course, of course! We are just delighted about this turn of events…if a little shocked!" The laugh that followed was gentle and bird-like. "But we are thrilled, I promise. Right, darling?"

My heavyset, balding, deadpan father grunted. "Sure we are."

This was, in fact, a proclamation of excitement. 

"See? We'll be fine," I whispered to Erica. She did not appear convinced. 

As we entered my childhood home, which was more just a house than anything else these days, Mum continued to make conversation about everything from her famous chicken pot pie to the ladies she'd gossiped with while standing in line for groceries to the state of the country. She also, at the conclusion of the evening, hugged Erica goodbye. 

"We are so glad she has someone now," Mum said in the midst of the strangling. Erica scrunched her nose in distaste. 

"It was hard for us to make her leave all those years ago but we knew we had to try! As parents, we have to try. I mean, what kind of life would she live without love? All these terms these day and, Adam and I really don't think it's healthy. Who are all of these a-sex-ua-ls and a-ro-man-tics anyway? Why need a label like that to announce…"

And if not for the other words spilling from her mouth, I would have found the slow-motion pronunciation of my identities hilarious. 

"Hah," said Dad. "That's right."

***

The dream came again that night.

"What do you mean Charlie's dead?" My voice, caught in the back of my throat, crumpled like a butterfly's wings. 

"I didn't think he would…I mean, he said…"

"How?"

"You know how."

***

One day, Erica asked me how long we should keep the facade running and I told her as long as we needed to so that we could create the performance of a lifetime. I said no one would believe me if we broke up after three months. I needed to milk the relationship. Act like I was so head-over-heels in love that I would never seek another again, after our inevitable end. It was the only way I'd have peace and it was the only way she could move on from her life. She was planning to move to Europe afterwards. She'd met a British woman online in the midst of our fake-dating scheme and brimmed with excitement. Staying in one place had always been difficult for Erica. She needed excitement and eroticism. She was bored to death of our plan already. 

***

They'd found him in his bed, as if he had simply gone to sleep. 

***

One night, we schemed to attend an exclusive club downtown. It was one of those places where you had to know somebody who knew somebody to get inside, and thanks to Erica's good fortune and propensity for hording knowledge, we "ran into" a friend from university. He happened to own the restaurant we dined at beforehand. 

"He'll be here tonight," Erica whispered to me as we opened the menus. "David is here every Friday evening to check on the guests personally."

I wanted to ask her how she knew this, but I decided against it.

David's past nine years hadn't treated him well. The bags under his eyes were like boulders. He was as tall and thin as he'd ever been, but he looked gaunt, as if being surrounded by food for all this time had actually eaten away his soul, not nourished his body. This was a refreshing sight. Sometimes I glanced at myself in the mirror and gagged. It was nice to know that other people were struggling as well. Especially those who made more than a million dollars a year. The universe had to impose its own balance, right? And David, he'd been the cream of the crop, the most self-important wiseass in Business School. Now, he was tied to this mausoleum of an establishment. 

We'd gone on one date in those days. When he informed me that he could "cure" me of my asexual tendencies, I ended things, then spread rumors about him. David was the last man I'd gone out with before I decided I liked myself as I was. 

"Holy smokes. I haven't seen you two together in ages! Welcome, welcome, to my humble abode. It will be my treat tonight!" David said with a sweep of his hands as he approached the table. He refused to make direct eye contact with me. Then he frowned. A flashback had arrived. "I didn't even realize you and Erica were still…"

I watched him, waiting for the rest of the sentence. It never came. He switched subjects with ease, the way an evangelical pastor—or snake oil salesman—evades touchy questions. Funny how easy it was to brush off death when it never impacted you directly. 

"Please let me know if you need anything at all," David said. He winked. 

Erica smiled. "Actually, there is something. We're hoping to have a bit of fun tonight…"

***

That night, Charlie and I had planned to meet up to discuss something. I didn't know what it was, just that he'd needed to get something off his chest. 

I'd been looking forward to the chat regardless of the big secret, as I had news of my own. One of my papers had made it mainstream. My dissection of a-spectrum identities was going to be published in one of the Big, Important, Thoroughly-Biased Magazines. It was going national. 

But grief delays, debilitates, destroys. 

I got a scheduled email two weeks after Charlie's death. His signature signoff sent me spiraling. And that's when my plan hatched. In the pit of my despair. 

***

In the last moments of her own despair, Erica asked me why I'd done what I did. 

"Charlie told me," I said. 

"Charlie…"

"He told me what you'd called him, after he revealed to you that he was developing feelings for you," I clarified, deadly calm. "And it was the last straw, with everything going on with his family life too."

Erica flushed red and she stuttered to a complete halt. "I couldn't…I couldn't reciprocate…not when he wasn't born as a…" 

"Words matter," I said. "And words have consequences."

***

"It was me. I killed America," I said to the officers sitting across from me. They seemed troubled by my apparent nonchalance. All this violence and rage, from a woman? 

What I didn't say was this: that I'd wanted to do it all along. That I'd been planning my revenge for years to make sure nobody forgot Charlie. But I knew that the first thing that people would read about me in the papers after I died to the electric chair after having been convicted for murder was that I did it because I was a psychopath, that I was not loved and did not love anybody. That my aromanticism and my asexuality were the reasons for my descent into hell. I couldn't do that to my community. 

That had always been in the back of my mind, you know? The perception of my own identity had always been distorted by the world's perception. Which meant no mistakes. No nuance. No hybridity, blending, blurred boundaries. 

I figured that it was time to control the narrative for once. And no—I don’t consider myself a monster. Though I wonder if you do. Maybe the answer is more fluid than you think. 

My apologies to all the lesbians out there, though. I’d never met a lesbian I didn't like, until Erica. But in this moment, I don’t think anyone would be quick to claim her. There is such thing as being queer without embodying queerness. 

So anyway. Back to the subject at hand, instead of some rambling villain’s monologue (which are, indeed, my last words, reader). 

I matched with Erica online. She didn't realize who I was at first. I explained about my needing a partner for the sake of my parents. We fake-dated. We met old friends and had a ball of a time. We snapped Instagram photos together and planned road trips and created bucket lists, though we were emotionally detached when alone. 

I promise you. I was born like this. But I didn't birth murder in my heart until America broke Charlie; until she chewed him up and spit him out into the world. 

"And I killed America, because America never recognized me."

That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant, though the real story dies with me.

Sincerely,

Liberty