Something in the Air

Content Warning: Mature Content and Language.

When did everything we do become so lonely?

I thought about this a lot while I waited for the next episode of The Family Code. With the current plot line the buzzy drama had promised to resolve today shivering in the airwaves like flammable vapor, I had to avoid social media. For among its denizens existed particularly loathsome assholes; waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting, expectant viewer with spoilers in everything they wrote: captions, descriptions, pictures - even emojis. Digital journalism wasn’t innocent, either. To hell with angry fans - they always wanted to be the first to tell you they’d watched, analyzed and shredded their wordy little pieces over that moment, of which their intern had now created a tidy GIF to wreak newsworthy havoc in your feed. 

Like there wasn’t enough poverty or murder in the world.

Sometimes I wanted to claw at the world, yowling, “Shut the fuck up! SHUT UP! Fuck you!” And then the other side of me pummeled the violent one. It held it down, tore up the killing intent like paper fragments; burned these to ashes that blew away in the wind.

My emotions while I waited for an episode of TV to release online frightened me. They felt unnatural, like I had been caged and was shouting through the cracks. It was probably because of the time of the day: the evening had quashed the remotest remaining sunbeam in a deluge of unwelcome darkness. September had truly bled into October - and in its wake, the dreaded daylight savings time had arrived.

I thought about what my mother would say in this situation. “Go for a walk.” That was a laugh and a half; she didn’t know how fucking dark it got these days. What if I was kidnapped? Or raped? Or mauled by a crosswalk-passing coyote, since those things were common here in Los Angeles? I had only seen this mannered behavior in the flesh once, and I didn’t really feel like repeating the experience.

Go for a walk, my ass.

Despite my derision however, I wanted my mom to hug me. For no other reason than to abate this restlessness eating me up from inside. I knew I would be fine if I caught The Family Code before signing in online, but that was also the only place to reach my mom. She was over ten-thou' kilometers away on the other side of the globe. You didn’t want to drag your parents with you like dolls in a suitcase when you moved out for grad school to another continent, but you sure as hell wished you could in these moments. If I’d known how far away she was going to seem and so often, too, I’d have never bothered to leave.

I scratched my arms beneath my comforter. I always parked myself on the cot during these times. It felt less like I was stuck in limbo, and more like riding under a rolling wave. I could doze for a bit. I could read. I could break out my secret stash of gummies and let the darkness press me down like tucking a child into bed.

But then I would miss The Code. 

This jarring thought had me uncoil the stuffy comforter and leap off my mattress. I needed to talk to actual humans, in real life.

My flatmates sat around the coffee table, each absorbed in their respective laptop. I barely saw them doing anything else. Actually, that wasn’t true: I’d once looked up from my own computer during a stultifying finals week, to see one of them chow down an entire roll of un-toasted bagels. We didn’t talk much, so it had been complete silence, punctuated with smacked, flying seeds that landed between the keys of my laptop.

I knew I liked it when we didn’t talk. Still, the effort had to be made if only to prevent myself from scratching my skin off with restlessness or something.

“Yo, ‘sup?” I asked, all casual-like. They jumped. I frowned at them - their reaction seemed excessive, even though I knew I was regularly startled by my own reflection every morning.

“Hello.” This was peckish bagel-lover Raven, recovering first. Her fortunate choice of snacks tonight was a Jello cup and some seltzer. “We just didn’t hear you moving around.” 

“Ah, yeah. I’m waiting on the new Family Code. It’s supposed to be out at 9.”

I saw mousy, brown-haired Martha check her phone and raise her eyebrows. I didn’t miss it either: ‘7:00 PM’ had briefly glimmered on her rimless spectacles. 

She caught me looking and grinned sheepishly. “Oof. Bit early, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’ve caught up on all my homework. You guys busy tonight?”

Raven downed her seltzer. “Only one more page to write before we celebrate Lola’s engagement.”

“Engaged?!” Lola, my third and most distant flatmate rewarded me with a wary nod. She was a compact girl; even standing up, the blonde curls around her china-doll chin barely skimmed the high table. She was, and appeared young.

“Nobody tells me anything around here,” I joked. Lola just looked uncomfortable. 

I coughed. “Good on you. I have to ask - aren’t you...I mean, you’re still in senior year, right?”

She shrugged. “I’m 21. Felt like it was time.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Wow. I don’t think I’d be ready this early.” Lola’s eyebrows rose too, but she wasn’t as nice about it.

“Aren’t you older than me?”

That was right. I was chatting with a child, about to celebrate her upcoming nuptials with a group of people whose the average age was still younger than I was. 

I slid my thumb through a hole in my tee. I couldn’t afford relationships now. I had things to do. 

TV to watch.

I tried clearing the air with a placid smile. “So! Where’s dinner, then?”

“Claire de Soi.”

Scratch that. I couldn’t even afford dinner. 

I strode back into my room; not that they cared anyway, each bent over her laptop again. As I closed my door, I caught a soft giggle, the tail end of a sentence: “...maybe bring her back a bottle of wine.” 

“Yeah. From Ralph’s.” More giggles, and a faint snort. 

Well. At least my sense of humor had matured.

I hated stressing out like this, because I then gave into intense masturbation. It was a ridiculous humiliation kink, as though all the pacing around, the internal monologues, secret critiquing and a dutch oven of simmering self-hatred boiled into an overwhelming maelstrom that could only break if I took care of myself. 

And ironically, it was when I felt the freest to imagine a different self. I imagined this persona wheeling itself out of my rotting coffin to find its wild way around the city’s murky shadows that I was otherwise too afraid to explore. It would grow and then seep, gleefully infectious, into the tiniest corners of mysteriousness afforded by the sleek modern angles in Brentwood; around the soaring columns of the Palisades and across Malibu’s divine blue vistas - I knew them well since they were depicted to postcard-perfection in my show. But this form would have no real distinction, because it could occupy seedy pockets on Hollywood Boulevard with seductive aplomb or kiss men and women with scarlet lips against the filthy, graffitied walls dotting South Los Angeles; then abdicate human desire altogether to haunt the county's most primordial environments. It traversed empty canyons and enlivened vacant suburbia. An omniscent avatar, birthed from the same supernatural energy as Mulholland Drive - the film, not the infamous road. One that existed without fear of peer reprisal, social exclusion or imagined animal encounters.

Boy did I go to town today. My fingers could not move faster; my hips canted and canted and still I wanted more. When I finished however, I lay there in a state of desolation. Any vestige of euphoria from that momentary frenzy evaporated almost immediately. Instead, I was little better than a reclusive thirteen year-old hoarding tissues: thighs soaked, armpits odorous and a leaden, lonely heart.

The door squeaked open and I squealed, throwing the comforter over my head again.

“Hey.”

It was Raven. I nosed away a corner of the comforter to peer at her.

“We’re heading out now, but you should join, too. It’s weird with just us three.”

I should say yes. I should say yes. I should say yes.

“The Code’s gonna be on in a few,” I said. My phone lit up with a clothing sales promotion. The clock read 8:15; I saw Raven lower her own device from the corner of my eye. She breathed in through her mouth.

“I mean -” she was trying not to offend, I knew it, and I was immediately annoyed. “It’s gonna be there for you to watch. Whenever you want.”

“I want to watch it when it comes out.”

Raven gave her act up and rolled her eyes - then she sniffed the air. “You should open a window. This is rank.”

Fucking Raven; I didn’t want her concern, I didn’t want her pity, I didn’t want her to talk to me at all. “Maybe you let something in.” 

Her lip curled. She shut the door with great deliberation, as though she wanted me to see her leave. I overheard her say, “I tried,” and Lola’s high, childish voice rang clear in reply: “You shouldn’t have.”

Lola and I didn’t have to talk to agree.

As the front door clicked shut in the distance, a strange heat overcame me. I ripped my shirt and wet shorts away, tossing them off the bed. I tipped my head back onto my pillow. My thighs came unstuck. Slowly, I felt my body weigh more and more by the second. My jaw loosened, my arms were slack and my legs sank into the bed like I was pulled underwater. 

Then, still horizontal, my body floated upwards. I turned over on my stomach, kicked the window open and flew outside over the city. It was such a strange shape, all glowing lines like a constellation filled in. I could pick out Lola, Raven and Martha studying card-stock menus in an upscale bistro, self-conscious as ambitious undergrads can only be. I could see glittering webs of spidery freeways, dewed with cars still at this late hour. Even the suburbs were bursting with light, from where Angelenos usually commuted without hope of getting back home by sunset. Black triangles - hills, trees, parks, canals - cut into the city and swallowed up the rest of its energy. Abounding all this, the Pacific lapped leisurely along the coast like a cat playing with its meal.

And far beyond, over the arc of the dark ocean curving around the planet, my mother would soon wake with the first light of her day. I pictured her dark head from above, face squished against her phone, which she never relinquished even in sleep. The sunlight would glint off the case and illuminate her whole face in minutes.

It was a pretty good view. I could stay afloat in the sky forever.

Beside my prone form, my phone’s alarm blared once, then again. The Family Code was on! My laptop chimed in, too, with Twitter notifications and Discord messages and live coverage of each quotable, meme-able moment on Reddit. GIFs were instantly generated. Articles were uploaded before the credits even rolled. The new episode was already a surefire hit.

And I slept on, still watching my mother as her eyes blinked open.

Fin.