Surgery in the Macy's Dressing Room
This one starts at a party...
It’s Saturday night and the zoomer women who live here are setting up for a coquette ritual on my rooftop. I arrive dressed like the dude from the Big Lebowski. There's a stupid star piñata and a stupid dainty tablecloth on an ugly metal desk that’s blowing in the wind. How many accessories do you stupid fashion pests have to wear to feel whole? I ask, wearing the worst outfit to exist. How much money are your big clompy shoes worth once you’ve left the tristate area?
I am asking bitchy questions because I have my own bitchy answers. After 2 drinks at my own housewarming party, I am a safety threat. I am disgusted by the thought of drunk women sloshing around my home in the dead of night.
“Do you like the pink album or the black album?,” a guest slurs at me.
She’s talking about The 1975, I guess, but I also don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. I want to say: hey queen, this isn’t The Beatles! But I say “black album!” like a good little girl and she looks through me. Her drink spills again. I wish she’d just aim it into her mouth.
Oh, you hate the parties? Why are you here. Name 10 things you don’t like about every person in this room.
I decide it isn’t the youth or the party that bothers me, it’s probably the Covid I’ve had for 3 months or the yeast infection that’s withstood the test of time. I have so many afflictions - wasn't modernity supposed to cancel all that? I'm ultimately doomed now; there’s no way I'll get into heaven at this rate.
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I slip into a deep depression after my coworkers choose fried chicken for lunch on a Tuesday. I scroll through articles validating me: studies show fried foods make you more depressed and anxious on average, a 2017 study showed that fried food consumption linked to 13% higher chance of death. I vibrate with how right I am to be angry.
Society is now just full of spiritual gooners.
Doordash everything, Uber everywhere. Learn from TikTok, love with Hinge. Smoke your vapes, eat your sugar.
I envision everyone in America salivating and groaning and gooning together. I think of ugly godless men who like Nintendo, I think of fat toothless teens who like boygenius, I think of bitchy worthless women who like gastropubs.
Everything I write is starting to sound like a manifesto found by police after I shoot up the school. I have longed to be the killer, the star, the catalyst.
All this hate isn’t sustainable, it’s probably worse than fossil fuel - but it’s the only pill I’m brave enough to take.
I view the vitriol as a sort of third eye, like the veil has shifted. I don’t have tolerance for interruptions, annoyances, disturbances, inconveniences. I scroll my phone like it’s my damn job!
In so many ways, I want the lives of the people I watch in my digital panopticon to implode. I want it to all come crashing down for every last one of them. If you’re wondering why, it’s because I built them all up myself. Like legos, like sand castles. It isn’t cruel to destroy your own creation. You’re mine because I picked you - it doesn’t matter why. Every instance we somehow find each other in this world is a glitch - you’re clipping through to my reality.
A thought emerges from all the paranoia: what if I just blocked every single person from Ohio?
Wow, what a concept! I stop myself from texting Ally and start walking through this really sexy fantasy.
Nobody would ever get to see my social media again. They wouldn’t be able to compare and talk and gossip and pretend and lie and kill and rape and pillage and piss and shit and vilify [my entire existence].
I think about all the little gay people in my phone; I'd have to erase a lot of them if I really want to do this right. I might finally even be… happy.
I’m obviously writing this on a bad day. I’m obviously in a mood. Nicole facetimes me, though, and she asks if I remember what happened in the Macy’s dressing room.
Vaguely. I remember she told me a story, but I ask her to tell me again:
In high school, Nicole and Mackenzie visited the town Macy’s after school. They walked toward the dressing room, Mackenzie in front of Nicole. Mackenzie peered into the large dressing room, the one reserved for people with disabilities or people with entitlement. Mackenzie, looking like a ghost, ran back to Nicole.
“You need to look in that dressing room.”
Nicole peeked into the room and saw what she describes as a body lying on a cot, with a nurse hovering above the cot. There is supposedly an IV bag involved.
Horrified, the girls fled the scene - but not before witnessing a second nurse walk past them and into the dressing room, holding a Chick-fil-A bag.
I love this story. I love the odd detail of the Chick-fil-A bag - like a smoking gun. I love that both Mackenzie and Nicole swear there is a body. Not a woman, but a body. It’s like Stand By Me but for girls. As soon as Nicole says body, I am crying tears of laughter. The mental image of this story is Lynchian; it’s a mystery for the ages.
After so much laughter, Nicole tells me that Mackenzie vowed to discover the truth behind the supposed surgery. She posted on Reddit in order to elicit the help of 45 year old poly people.
As you can imagine, nobody knew the fucking answer. Mackenzie would have to return to the scene of the crime if she wanted the truth. Nicole told me that Mackenzie questioned an employee who had been there around that time, who gave her clarity on what they saw that fateful day.
I don’t think anyone who reads this should get the truth of it from me, because it’s not really even my story to tell. Nicole and Mackenzie were haunted for five years, so you can be haunted now, too.
I am only telling you this story because when I heard it again, my entire body softened. The hate and fear that made my body rigid immediately dissipated. It's like a switch flipped inside me. I know who I am and who I was. Sometimes, it only takes the memory.