There’s a creek behind my apartment, a tiny stream with a drop that I like to imagine is a waterfall. Really it’s just falling water, a slight dip in elevation that creates the impression of beauty, something I can pretend makes the property unique. On weekends I dangle my feet over the railing and picture Niagara, photos of Angel Falls in Venezuela, what it must look like to the guppies and mosquitos trawling through the current. It reminds of the dreams I used to remember having, before the Zoloft and the Wellbutrin.
I try to take care of Rita, though her eyes are getting dimmer, more vacant. She’s a terrier, missing most of her teeth, and the ones that are left have minor fractures in them. I brush every other night but they’re only lines, traces in the surface that I hope don’t sting too much, despite the surrounding discoloration. If I had a salary I would pay to restore or replace the crowns. I don’t care how few months she has left. But she’s still a good dog, content with her lot. I’ve promised her I’m going to spread her ashes in the yard when it’s time, and I think she’d wait about a week to eat me if I bled out onto my living room couch. So together I know we love each other.
I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for two years and it’s just about fed up with me. It’s chilly when it should be warm and hot when it should be cool and I think it’s waiting for me to take the hint. My neighborhood is inoffensive, home to clumps of university students and small families that hang laundry lines and the generally unsupervised. I doubt there’s room here for a dropout past due on the rent. I could barely afford my place on a waiter’s dime, back when I had the dime to spend.
I take a sip of watery coffee and check my mail. Junk mail, coupons, bills, bills. A subscription form for Pottery Barn. A reminder from my landlord that the first of May is rapidly approaching. A previous resident’s TV Guide, which I keep because it’s tall and thin and good for smacking lanternflies off the walls. That’s been my major project here: exterminating the Japanese Spotted Lanternfly, a species invasive to Pennsylvania that’s been breeding and secreting and choking helpless trees for years now. I smash them into goo with rolled-up magazines, spray them with a Google-recommended mixture of vinegar and dish soap, wrap sticky paper around the willow out back so that they smother and starve and strain themselves to death. I make my rounds every morning. It keeps me occupied, the illusion that I’m singlehandedly defending the environment, that I’m making a difference, one larva at a time.
Image strings unspool in my brain when it rests for too long, chains of thoughts and pictures in rapid, paralyzing succession, and now a new one ensnares me: dozens and dozens of lifeless lanternflies, legs twitching, squashed and heaped and compressed into a carpet of dead insects. The new arrivals clamber upwards, straining to the surface, cannibalizing the corpses of their parents before shriveling and dying themselves, to start the process anew. On and on they rise and recoil, piling their bodies further and further in layers that refuse to disintegrate, until the whole backyard is nothing but a garden of rotting bushes with red-and-black spots. The berries twitch when you pick them, and they explode into goo when you pop them into your mouth.
Two weeks without antidepressants are starting to catch up with me. It’s probably good that I’m getting back on the job market.
Last night I had a chat with one of my friends, my roommate of three years back at college in Raleigh. He’s gay but I’m not, and sometimes I wonder if that’s the only thing holding us together. That he can say he’s had an open-minded straight friend for 3+X years, and I can say I’ve lived with a gay guy and we’re still buddies. Nothing weird ever happened. (Plenty of weird shit happened, but it wasn’t his fault. Anyway I’m too proud of calling myself tolerant to acknowledge that it did.)
“It seems like you’re doing better,” he said. His chin looked slightly sunken, compressed by the video. He was drinking white wine out of a mug.
“Yeah man,” I said. I say “man” to everyone now, for no real reason. “As well as I can, you know? All things considered. But I’m doing okay.”
He’s heard this lie before. “Well hey, Will,” he said, “there’s a theater gig down here that I thought you might be interested in.”
I hadn’t acted since high school, and I reminded him of this. “Not on stage,” he said. “Up in the lighting booth, flipping switches. It’s for a ballet troupe. They need someone reliable and I namedropped you to our producer.”
“How much does it pay?”
He shrugged. “It’s a foot in the door. Think of it like an internship.”
I thanked him and kept my face still, muting myself to type up a search on Raleigh apartments, knowing that the average cost of rent in Pittsburgh was 47% cheaper. I supposed I could bank my hopes on the long-term prognosis of…whatever this position was, even though I’d never been particularly intrigued by dance. Not that I couldn’t enjoy it, but I much preferred singing, acting, the aspects of the theater with which I was far more fluent. Maybe I’d be able to fake sincere interest to this producer, apply my limited technical knowledge to making ballerinas look even skinnier and prettier than they already did.
“They need someone reliable,” he repeated, and this time there was an edge to his voice. A request to think carefully about my choice. An unspoken reminder, not to let him down this time.
“Thanks man,” I said again, and I changed the subject.
My interview at Turning Point is scheduled for 2:00, so I’m only fifteen minutes late. Their shift is winding down, given that they’re a breakfast place, and as I approach a tall waiter in one of their maroon shirts holds the door for me. His eyes are dull, and after I enter he brushes past me to the parking lot. I see a pack of cigarettes dangling under one arm, clutched to his chest like a life preserver.
The manager has large hoop earrings and a too-white smile. “Nice to meet you, William,” she says as I sit.
I used to get a secret thrill, when someone said my name like that. Not the rote roll call of attendance or the disapproving summons of a parent, but the feeling of a new person testing your name on their tongue. People rarely use your name once it’s been established, instead it’s “Hey you” or “Hi” with no heading or they keep it short with a wave and a nod and jump right into conversation. There’s promise in the way a stranger says your name. There’s potential. Before they get to know you, at least. Before you get to know them.
“Prior experience looks good,” she says, scanning my slightly stained resume. “We’d probably be able to get you on as a server in a month, after a trial period bussing. That sounds reasonable, right?”
To our right I can see a packed counter, knockoff French presses lined up in rows and bins full of dirty dishware waiting for transport. There’s notes of egg and onion grease and burnt bacon wafting from the kitchen in the back; it’s not terrible, but I’m already getting sick of it. Busboys slink from table to table, clearing off crumbs with wet wipes between concealed bites of leftover chicken fingers. I get the impression that everything here is hanging by a thread, held together with butter and soapsuds and readymade Employee of the Month plaques. I don’t even want to guess how many health code violations there are.
Maybe I really do belong here.
“You get discounts on the food,” she says. “And if the chefs are up for it they can make you something after a shift.” The discount was my main draw for choosing Turning Point: there’s a milkshake machine in a corner of the counter, and I haven’t been able to afford ice cream in forever. Sugar and dairy; that plus the serotonin from the antidepressants should keep me going for another few months at least.
She stares at my resume again, squints. “And why did you leave your last job?” A stack of plates collapses onto the tiles behind her, and the girl who’d been clutching them lets a torrent of swears fall from her mouth. The manager shoots a glare over, her question forgotten for the moment.
I left because it was exactly like this.
My stomach gurgles, and she pretends not to hear. Polite of her. Or she’s just plain desperate. I bet the turnover here is pretty steep, and she looks close enough to my age that I doubt this was her first choice.
I’ve been skipping breakfast for weeks now, so it’d actually make sense to end up here. I could think of it as a benefit, like I’m working for one of my meals. It’s not a terrible idea. Aside from every other single fucking thing.
I don’t like loitering at the library—too much dust, not enough room to breathe—but the power’s gone out at my place. Maybe it’s a simple blackout, or maybe the landlord’s putting me on notice, but either way I need at least an hour of Wi-Fi right now. Most of the computers are occupied, so I plop into a squishy lounge chair and pull out my phone. I nestle in place and dig my other hand into the armrest, feeling the fabric flex and pulse beneath my fingers.
I reopen the email on my phone. It shimmers, winks, mocking me. The Community College of Allegheny County is encouraging me to apply.
I was only a third of the way through the application, so there isn’t much to redo. It’s hard to see it all on a smaller screen, but I make the effort anyway. Under age I write 26, under major I put TBD. Under race…I don’t know which race to select. Back then I was Asian in all the ways that mattered and white in all the ways that didn’t. By which I mean schoolkids thought I was too smart and schools thought I wasn’t smart enough. By which I mean my eyes were angled enough to stick out but not slanted enough to blend properly. By which I mean, by which I mean. It shouldn’t make a difference to me, I never felt like I belonged to one group or the other. But there’s only room for one checkmark and suddenly I’m wedged in place.
I have more in common with the lanternflies than I’d like to admit. Everyone calls them Japanese, but they originated in China, Taiwan, and India before spreading to neighboring countries. They’re mislabeled, their place of origin misattributed, their home distant and forgotten. Not that that gives them the right to exist, of course, meaningless as their contributions to society are.
Why would I go back to college? What would I go to learn? I left NC State because I didn’t know the answer, and four years later I’m still clueless. That’s actually a more flattering revision of the truth: leaving, as opposed to being expelled. Like I made a conscious decision to find myself, rather than being so unmotivated that I just stopped showing up to things. Like I hadn’t failed out of every class, like I wasn’t as depressed then as I am now. What a charming pretense.
People like to think of depression as a fog, but that’s only half of it, the half reserved for the depressed themselves. For everyone else depression is a rock. They think there’ll be more to it somehow, if they’re able to flip it over, some shiny gem or treasure buried inside, but there isn’t. It’s just a rock. And you certainly don’t want to tell them so, because then they’ll try to test the weight—the weight you’ve spent your whole life learning to bear, struggling to keep upright—and they won’t be able to take it. It’ll crush them. They’ll feel bad that they couldn’t lift more, and pity you, or they’ll pretend they can but you’ll know different, you’ll see the strain in their eyes, and eventually they’ll resent you for it. Or they’ll hand it back to you and never talk to you again, which is the sensible thing to do. Because who would want to be burdened like that forever, if given the choice?
The dust is starting to make my nose run. I wipe it away, along with something wet at the edge of my eye, and head for the automatic doors.
I stop at Wendy’s on the way home, scarf a handful of spicy nuggets and wash them down with ketchup. The power’s still out when I return, so I slide the screen door open to let Rita walk. She’s eager to go, I can tell, but she doesn’t move right away. She just hangs back, eyes blank, waiting for something or someone else to take the lead. A pit settles in my stomach, and I push through the door without checking to see if she joins me.
Indecision is worse than death, I think. If I were a corpse I’d at least be fertilizer, fuel for weeds and bugs and scavenging mammals. Dead I’m part of nature’s course, but alive? Alive and listless, stuck in place? It’s pathetic. Except I’m not nearly brave enough to end it prematurely. I’m afraid of the pain, however momentary. No, that’s not it: I’m afraid of letting go. It’s all I have. Imagine that, I’m scared to give up on the thing that’s hurting me. I’m in an abusive relationship with my own life, and I’m too used to it by now to take the plunge. There’s no easy way out, not even the easy way out.
Rita’s following from a safe distance. She can probably tell I’m upset. Perhaps talking aloud to myself about suicide isn’t helping.
I head for a spot shadowed by trees. I don’t like the night sky here because there aren’t any streetlights, and I can see straight through to the stars. They’re too far apart, the blankness between them vacant and vast. Thinking about it makes me dizzy. Another image string to get stuck on: heat death, black holes and supernovas, planets cracking and tumbling and spinning out of orbit into ashy fragments. Everything ending in an instant, billions of years from now or tomorrow, tick-tock. And yet when you bring that up to people, they shrug. They think you’re the crazy one for mentioning it, they’re tired of you being a downer. I know it’s uninspired, and it makes me feel ashamed. But there’s not much nuance in dread.
I guess it’s hard to see a point, when you know nothing in the universe is going to pan out. That’s a deep hurt, unapproachable and unmarketable. So you keep trying. Because the alternative is awkward bar conversation.
It’s a beautiful evening though, even I have to admit that. Warm and a little muggy and blanketed in beads of dew. There’s an owl a few oaks down who’s refusing to hoot, in case I mean him harm, and Rita takes a few sniffs in his direction before squatting on the ground to piss. I find a seat on the grass, feeling lanternfly larvae flee before me and the dew staining my legs. Above me a spiderweb drifts, an intricate latticework of a web that’s empty for the moment, though I recall there being an oversized orb-weaver hovering somewhere close.
My options are myriad. I can move to Raleigh on a pipe dream to pursue the vague internship, trusting myself to find the joy in it, to not return to the headspace I was in last time I was there. I don’t really trust myself that much. I can work at Turning Point and keep my place here, only then I probably would end up killing myself. I can apply to CCAC with the funds I don’t have—I guess I can stay with Turning Point for a bit, then wherever else for however long, and then finally when I’m forty I’ll have saved up the money (minus rent and medication) to shoot my shot. Or I could ask my dad and stepmom for help, but they’ve got two kids in college and their own mortgage they’re managing. I could apply for another loan, but I still owe money on the last degree I failed to earn. No, it’s restaurants, then community college, then I have no clue because I won’t be employable, I’ll be forty-two with an associate’s degree in who knows what and I’ll be a nervous wreck, I’ll be depressed and alone and waiting feverishly for the end, I’ll have no options. I have no options.
The stream burbles nearby, oblivious to it all.
It occurs to me that spiders have it the worst. Spiders have less time than any of us and they can’t afford to whine about it, because they spend the entirety of their lives making masterpieces. And when the wind picks up, it all blows away. No one ever even sees the discarded webs. And the spiders, they have to start all over again. It’s a nightmare. But they don’t know, or they don’t care. They do it anyway. Maybe because they’re too busy to know better. Maybe that’s life to them. That’s all it is.
I don’t need to make a decision yet. I can decide not to decide, at least until tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.
Rita circles in place beside me, then rests her head on the grass in a comfortable spot. I breathe. I watch what’s left of the evening pass us by.