Emergent Properties

As the walls begin to close in, a new feeling emerges.
The shuddering girl sleeps with her arms crossed. A brown fitted sheet is crawling off the mattress under her. It reveals a somewhat soft interior flesh– uniform quilted squares. The process remains unchanged.
And inside of that, there is foamy foam. It’s forbidden to sleep on.
It is sad to sleep on a mattress without a cover. It makes her feel empty, the walls close in on the mattress, and inside of the mattress, it isn't empty. It's filled with fluffy pink foam.
The walls aren't empty because they are filled with pink foam too which is also glass. On the far wall there is one half of the bathroom that was opened up, part of the apartment had black and white tile floors. But everything was filled with everything else. Or it was surrounded by everything else.
She got invited to her friend’s house to sleep over.
She takes off her shirt and pants and reveals the pink interior of her body. The window is open and it is cold. Everyone can see you from outside.
Imagine the events that would transpire. After a long night of partying at a bar in Brooklyn, NY,
you stay up so late. You stay up so late that when you walk outside it is bright out and people are going to work. And they're all dressed up in their work clothes getting ready for the day and drinking coffee. And you don't want to go out there. It hurts you. It stings. The beating bright light bites you, and it's cold. It is 6:45 in the morning. Your small friend who is two decades older than you invites you to come to his house to make pancakes. He discusses ejaculating with clinical precision. You reject his offer. You go on the subway with another man who is two decades older than you, who is dressed in a black felt trenchcoat. You are searching for pot. The two of you patrol Union Square for at least an hour. You are unsuccessful and fruitless in your search.
So you get on the train again and you sit for a while and talk and hold your head and drink a green margarita in a can. And for the first time, because this is sort of about me and i mean definitely in a way,
which is interesting because im not even sure why i decided to bring myself out of the picture, like it was so strange for me i couldnt even see it like how I did when I was there.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t think of the things I think are UNREAL!
But, I was awake for two days. And ever since then I’ve been weighing my options about what to do from here. I even thought about going home, but I forgot this is as much of a home as any place is. I talked to that same guy in the felt trench coat about bringing a slab of cardboard everywhere I go, even when I am inside I put the cardboard on the ground so I don't take up too much space. In retrospect, it seems like an ok idea.
I can sleep on it too, so i dont have to be his pink swimming towel in the morning.
A night I remember, I felt like a girl. A bar in the lower Manhattan area with inner tube notoriety, famous famous. I met a man who used to be a reporter, Freelance now, that offered me an undergraduate internship at a small magazine in Baltimore.
I sat with him and a table of 5, all men, who were artists and who were older than me. They each took turns buying seagreen bottles of red wine, oh how happy jolly wonderful and cold outside it was that day, that when I went for a cigarette with a gay man who had Polish ancestry, and he looked at me with sad eyes like he knew exactly why the older men liked me so much. When he looked down at me, I thought that he was dumb, a narcissist, and I said goodbye to him and my little glowing cigarette ash. When I came back inside, I sat down and listened to the reporter with intent. He was hairy, wearing plaid, and he talked with an intonation that reminded me of men on youtube or men on podcasts that I didn't like to listen to because it wasn't made for me aka it was no girls allowed. The corner table was dark and covered in coats. The glimmer of a tealight candle enhanced the indoor space. My male friends plotted in the pale yellow underglow.
I heard Robert, under the clatter and the laughing, say, “It makes it more interesting!” He stuck his neck out to the center of the table and grinned and poured absentmindedly into my glass.
“I mean I guess.” Erik rested his head on the wood wall behind him and deepened his narrow eyes. “But why do you even have to make the distinction in the first place, is what I’m saying.’
“Believe me, there’s a difference.” Robert took a resolute gulp.
I smiled and said, “What’s the difference, then?”
Robert scanned his eyes around the table, like my voice was coming from the other side of the room. He caught mine.
“Autistic girls fuck better than normal ones.”
The rest made pyramids with their hands and felt me shrink and they smiled too knowing what he said was suppposed to be crazy, but that they understood what he was saying, how he made sense because he went to the farthest reaches of truth. He went on about his girlfriend back in Seattle, how they have an open relationship, how his love for anime shaped his obsession, how a smile creeps on their faces at the moment of climaxxing that resembles the face cartoon girls make in hentai, how he can make them scream when he cums.
I got up to chat with the young bartender who looked like a boy I once crushed on in elementary school. He made me a free Aperol spritz. I sat down again and felt nervous. Robert asked me what I wanted, I told him I wanted another Aperol spritz, but I said I would get it. I got up and he seized my arm in his hand. We stared at each other for a moment. He spoke steadily, but slowly.
“I find you really attractive right now.”
To him, I was prey.
maybe it’s just the shock that makes me feel something new. maybe I just like to be surprised.
i wish you would come to me like an old friend, and hug and kiss me like before, and snap out of it to leave again and go home. I wish if that happened that I would have no remorse, that just a little bit would be enough to satiate me for the rest of my life. But I know for certain that it is not.
The sleeping girl wakes. How is it to feel so peaceful? []