Problems by Jade Sharma Read Free Book Online

paint? i still have that oneyou gave me for my birthday somewhere. it was really good.
8:56 PM
Molly: boo. i was never talented. i didn’t care so i was like free or whatever. having a kid has made me boring and fat and i can’t even enjoy this nathan thing cuz i don’t know how to be the kind of person who doesn’t care if it goes away or not. i’m in an old lady panic about it.
8:58 PM
the sex got better last month. by a mile. he used to be really selfish and weird in bed, which i just happen to think is hot. but now, i’m having like blackout fireworks stuff
    Maya: i’m so jealous. last time ogden didn’t even want to
9:01 PM
Molly: the same thing happened with me and nathan where we didn’t fuck for a while and i thought maybe that was the end, so i asked him over e-mail “do you think we are winding down?” and he just said “i’ll wind you down.”
    oh don’t be jealous
    i have a kid so i have to feel like i’m doing something wrong all the time. at least your life is still your own to fuck up.
    When I got out of the store, the cool air felt good on my hot skin. My hoodie was getting wet. I smelled rank. I broke into a run. Passed the couples, dodged umbrellas. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
    Fall off the Earth. Get high and think about how you should stop getting high.
    My life was my own to fuck up. At least in America where you know you’re free.
    When I was kid, I was always on airplanes. I was an army brat,so we moved a lot. I would imagine how if the plane crashed others would be saved before me. I imagined the frustration rising up in me. Wanting to shout, “Do you have any idea who I am?” There would be no way to tell them I was special. That I knew somehow I was destined for greatness. I thought it would be a misunderstanding if I died.
    But then you grow up, and all the extras are real people. Like when you look down from a bridge and have to wrap your mind around how in each little toy car is a real person with a whole life. There are smart people everywhere. There are idiots everywhere. There is no order to it. There is no reason you’re not dying in a cancer ward and some little kid is.
    Ran up Elizabeth’s stoop. I could hear the rats rustling just out of my peripheral vision. After I buzzed Elizabeth, I turned back and made myself stare at the rats bursting out of the garbage. Some were going into the hole in the garbage bag while other rats were running out, their skin touching as they passed one another. It made me jumpy, like one was about to run up my leg. Rats had teeth.
    Molly once told me that her friend had a male rat, and when it went down her arm, she could feel the rat’s balls on her skin.
    All Elizabeth’s furniture had been found on the street or looked as though it had. The sofa had a maroon velvet sheet with black roses on it that was always sliding off. There was a sticker on the mirror of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom that read, “Fuck You! I’m Batman.” Noah, her ex, had his paintings hung up on the wall because he didn’t have the money to put them in storage. Or so he claimed. She had dumped him nearly two years ago. There was something sinister about the way he left his stuff around. It was probably some kind of male territory type thing, like, “My shit is here so this bitch is still mine.”
    Noah’s paintings were creepy. They looked like what would happen if Norman Rockwell were possessed by Charles Manson. They featured adolescent boys wearing white briefs and disturbing white masks with horns or snouts. A lot of the scenes were in nature. There was one of a little girl stabbing a giant fuzzy panda, and blood poured out of the wound and spattered her long dress.
    You live in New York, and you’re so cool. You have an apartment in the East Village, and you call yourself an artist. But after a while, you forget what it was you were so excited about.