Fucking Daphne by Daphne Gottlieb Read Free Book Online Page B

chaos of her body and face for the reasons why. I came up with more than a few. I wondered if she had normal, boring sex, or if her lovers had to have a PhD in alt sex in order to not get laughed out of the room.
    I don’t know how it happened that the conversation turned to pills—Lexapro, Effexor, Xanax, Wellbutrin. Daphne was on all sorts of pills at various times and at the same time. She said that without pills, she would most definitely be dead. At that moment she was on Effexor, Klonopin, pot, and Bushmills.
    â€œI’m actually on a Lexapro right now,” I shared. I saw a charge go through her body the instant the L-word was spoken.

    â€œI love Lexapro!” she said. “Lexapro totally makes me feel like I’m on E!”
    â€œSeems okay.”
    â€œHow long have you been taking it?” She had a green plastic clip in her hair. It was in the shape of a bird. She took it off, clipped it on her pinkie finger, and tapped out a rhythm with it.
    â€œI just took one this morning. There was a bottle in the dorm room at the school.”
    â€œI’m on Effexor right now, but I think I’m going to switch back to Lexapro,” she said. My previous comment slid by as if it were completely normal.
    â€œBasically, I like Vicodin,” I said. I made sure the sentence came out in the most pared-down, Strunk and White sort of way so the subtext could be read easily: “Basically, I like Vicodin” equals Do you have any Vicodin?
    â€œXanax, now there’s a drug,” she said. Read: I don’t have any Vicodin and I’m onto you. If you want a Vicodin, you better slam twenty bucks or the phone number of Ira Silverberg or some other hipster agent on the table right now, and geesh, like, your whole surfer/biker look is so totally lazy and obvious. You think you’re beyond being derivative of a manufactured white-trash aesthetic, but you’re not.
    I knew she was thinking this about me. I just knew.
    â€œDo you have any more Lexapro?” she asked.
    â€œNot on me.”
    â€œDamn, I could really use one right now,” she said. She took the hair clip off her pinkie and set it in front of me like she was placing a bet. “My psychiatrist usually prescribes me what I want, but sometimes it’s easier just to get it off the street. I swear that’s
all psychiatrists are good for. I know what pills I need and when I need them.”
    â€œMe too! I go on the Internet and research everything. It’s like a hobby. Sometimes I’ll find a pill on the ground—”
    â€œâ€”and you take it home and look it up on Pillfinder.com .”
    â€œPillfinder!!!”
    We high-fived over the table.
    I told her about the molecular structure of Gabapentin, also known as Neurontin, how it was basically a neurotransmitter in a pill. She explained the science behind hypnotics such as Ambien and Xanax, how they’re worthless in combating real anxiety unless used in combination with an antidepressant.
    â€œIt’s really fucked that I have to have a psychiatrist to give me pills. I know what pills I need, and I should be able to just go and buy them. Like Adderall. Adderall is a damn good reason to get up in the morning if you’re depressed,” she said.
    â€œI love Adderall!” I enthused.
    â€œFor some reason, my psychiatrist lets me have an open prescription for Adderall, but I have to beg for the Lexapro,” she mused. “Doesn’t make sense.”
    At this point, little orange bottles of pills were doing the Macarena, the hootchy-kootchy, and the bunny hop simultaneously in my head. Daphne must have known how much I wanted a pill, any pill. Still, she didn’t offer me any. If she was being intentionally sadistic, she hid it well. She was getting increasingly drunk on a third, then a fourth, Bushmills. She was slurring and going on about a person who was obsessed with her. The girl had made a collage out of her own