what are you afraid of
(a missive on sisterly love & angst) (names, identifying info & other incriminating details have been changed) (not too much, though)
I coaxed open my tiny kitchen window and crawled onto the fire escape in my socks. My little sister Tina was gone. She had perched right here beside me the first night she came to town, long legs dangling off the peeling steel railings, pointing to a constellation in the strangely clear Brooklyn sky. I think it was a warrior, there was a bow and an arrow and a line of stars shooting out of it. Do you see it, she demanded gleefully, waving an ecstatic open arm to the late summer night, breathing in the cool air and exhaling loudly in that obnoxious yoga sort of way. Ahhhhhh. Her desire to share this moment with me felt violent. It was a gesture designed to make me feel internally desolate, underscoring her graceful acceptance of the gifts of the universe and my inability to feel satisfied or touched by anything. I squinted upwards and lethargically scanned the night, but all I saw was the vacancy of where a warrior should be, the sagging absence of what I was meant to feel. Yeah, I lied, arms folded defensively, stiff smile and staccato breath. I see it.
fire escape would’ve been down & to the left. (literally lifting all of these pic off of facebook)
Days earlier, Tina foisted a basket of homemade muffins into my bloated waxy arms, burned from long months of balancing sizzling plates of nachos and fielding overflow from slippery mugs of crappy diner coffee. I put intentions in them, she said mysteriously, winking in her warm witchy way and drowning me in the softest hug. She reeked powerfully of some essential oil from a tiny brown bottle, sandalwood or patchouli except she always claimed it was her natural scent. Tina was killing me. She had returned from six months of unpaid service at the meditation center and shown up glowing at my front door, talking a mile a minute about her sweat lodges and silent yoga and 6 hour long encounter groups, where she learned she had never before experienced real intimacy. She was finally learning how to have healthy relationships, she said, and she would have to start leaving the toxic dynamics of our family behind if she was ever going to be happy and free.
blocking out the face of my beautiful real sis because she is a profesh person and this story is mostly true but not 1000% true and I am trying to be someone who is respectful and has good boundaries. but tbh you’re missing out on a gorgeous face.
I felt so betrayed. Tina was my accomplice. There was a rhythm to our sisterhood that hinged on mutual understanding; we would both always be miserable and depressed, and all that shifted was who currently suffered more. We used to steal whole bottles of cheap whiskey from our Dad, take obliterating hits from the giant bong and play the anguish olympics, falling asleep with trays of French bread pizza congealing on matching beer bellies. Now she was telling me she had discovered her true dance in a shamanic journey, I swear her whole face lit up when she said it, true dance. Apparently her most genuine, unhindered personhood rose up in her like a beam of toasty, rose-colored light, propelling her wildly around the room like a madwoman, kicking her legs and howling to the ceiling. I had never felt so alive, she mooned sincerely, so liberated from who I was and thought I should be, from all the ways I contributed to my stagnancy and despair. She really did look alive, all unblemished skin and cartoonishly flushed cheeks, a shining mane of well- conditioned hair. Even her scalp looked clean. She peered up at me with hopeful pleading eyes, brown and clear and round as two tootsie pops. I changed the subject to the girl I liked, to when she’d like to take a shower. True dance. I wanted a true dance.
Tina wanted to stay in and catch up, go to the grocery store and make me dinner with real vegetables. For lunch I had made her a salad composed exclusively of items from cans, and we sat around farting and laughing all afternoon, a momentary throwback to the silliness and ease of the good old days. How can you eat like this, she implored and I just shrugged, embarrassed my little sister no longer thought everything I did was superior and great. I was afraid to stay home alone with her, this person I had known since the second she was born who was suddenly so much better at being a grown-up than I was. In my nightmarish daydream she would make me do some awful self-penetrating Zen exercise, where she sat cross-legged two inches from my rigid body, her sweet solemn face asking me the same question over and over again, what are you afraid of, she’d whisper, with terrifying earnestness and calm. What are you afraid of?
Instead I dragged her out with me and my herd of rowdy friends to this bar in Williamsburg we’d been haunting all summer. By 3 pm they sold tall pitchers of Budweiser for seven dollars, had a back garden stocked with free hot dogs and hamburgers and enormous spoonfuls of mayonnaisey potato salad.
shout out to the heyday of the Metropolitan BBQ in Williamsburg, with my #1 bbq buddy whose real identity I am concealing for privacy but I will say they grew up to be an incredible and accomplished writer and I’m so proud of them.
Tina kept trying to have real conversations with me and I just kept getting drunker, hollering obscenely at people that walked through the door, darting noncommittally in and out of handfuls of little huddles and fanatically refilling her plastic cup of beer. Eventually I clutched a whole sweating pitcher to my chest, drinking straight from its giant mouth and spitting enormous foamy streams into my friends’ dirty hair. I don’t think I can keep up with you guys, Tina breathed, her little sister need to please going head to head with her newfound enlightenment. Tina hadn’t had a drink in months, hadn’t been around this kind of lawless emotional terrorism since her days of high school delinquency and it was really upsetting her. I just couldn’t let myself care. If I cared about this I’d care about everything. My blackening lungs and atrophying brain, my belly full of processed foods. Not to mention everyone I had ever hurt or let down, all the bad things I’d done and good things I would never do. I would care about every terrible everything and then I would die, collapse into a violently trembling heap or end up at the psych ward the next morning, gauntly pacing the halls in blue hospital gowns, a thin syringe of Valium to the ass.
At midnight we headed home, the pack of us riding bikes to our apartments, shrieking maniacally and racing through the pouring summer thunderstorm like complete idiots. Tina had borrowed my roommate’s old bike that had been lying uselessly in the hallway for years, and halfway home her tire went flat. She was uncomfortably drunk and nauseous and screaming at me to slow down, her long gauzy hippie skirt getting tirelessly caught in the rusting wheels. When we got back to my house she roared and sobbed so freely, this long -haired rain –drenched strong and wild animal, my little sister. I stood there feeling terrible but impassive, lamely repeating I’m sorry. Can we please go to bed now?
me in my dirtbag glory circa 2006, and the bike with which I committed these sisterly crimes
In the morning Tina slept and I lurched my way to work. All day I felt so wicked, tiptoed shamefully around the diner in my ketchup-encrusted apron, drinking a hundred cups of bitter coffee and feeling sorry for myself. In between tables I spilled the story to my co-workers, who kept laughing at what I had imagined were the saddest, meanest parts. I am a shit, I repeated mournfully, offering a frantic kindness to all my customers, sneaking them free refills of iced tea, extra dollops of blue cheese dressing.
I opened the door to my apartment and saw Tina standing in my cramped, filthy kitchen. She’d done the dishes, was hovering over a bubbling pot of delicious-smelling soup with a sturdy wooden spoon I’d never seen before. She smiled awkwardly and I hugged her quick and desperate, apologized for being an asshole, collapsed exhausted and wordless on the fraying red couch. I let my eyes close and listened to the familiar sounds of my sister’s tall, capable body, stirring things, chopping things, telling me about her day. One day I would make her a pot of soup, offer her brightly-colored things to eat, have a bed with clean sheets for her to sleep. I’d sit on the tiny couch and make room for her to sit too, stare openly into her freckles and let her grab my sticky hands, breathe her warm Tina breaths right into my face. I wouldn’t want to turn away, wouldn’t need to destroy it. I’d be happy she was so free.
ADDENDUM:
AHHHHH thank you so much for reading this mid-aughts nostalgia fest! and thank thank you thank you to all my new subscribers! I posted recently on IG about my decision to start this Substack in the hopes of eventually having it subsidize Shame Spiral Podcast & allow me to launch Season 2, and since yesterday I am so much closer to my goal!!! I need 100 paid subscribers to break even on the pod, and thanks to all of you I only have 80 more to go, which is I guess a lot but it’s ten less than yesterday and I’m feeling hopeful! (which as an angsty pessimist, is truly not my go- to setting) so seriously. THANK YOU! and if you’re not able to swing a paid subscription but have joined as a free subscriber, I COMPLETELY relate and understand and am super super grateful that you’re here. <3
one more thing/brief caveat- these last two posts have now both been very kinda creative nonfiction-y, a memoir-ish vibe if you will, and I just want you to know not all of my posts will be this way. some will be much messier and unedited and spontaneous and silly and less literary. not that i’m saying these two are sooooo literary and soooo amazing, i mean obviously they’re probably total garbage, but just since we’re all new here just encouraging you, for my own sanity, to LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS, prepare yourself for a real smorgasbord of offerings from me ranging from the very low to the medium brow, and I LOVE YOU!
xoxoox ely