West Coast Boyfriend
I have a long-distance boyfriend who lives on the West Coast. This happened because of a cosmic fluke. God sneezed and there was a blip in linear time for just one second and two separate universes collided into each other. Luckily, there was no damage to the Earth in this timeline. Last time when God sneezed, all the dinosaurs died. However, there was still a mistake, because this West Coast man happened to come across a nobody southern girl like me on the internet and actually liked me. It never should have happened, and it wasn’t supposed to happen, but somehow it did. There is no other possible explanation.
The problem with this, however, is that it made me a liar: he was tricked into thinking I was interesting and attractive and smart. I’m not. And I’m a terrible liar, unfortunately. I will attempt, in the next few lines of text, to fix everything. Because if I can’t hold together the fragments of the multiverse blip, then my West Coast Boyfriend will vanish into a black hole and the black hole will close up and I’ll never see him again as long as I live or even after everyone is dead, because I’ll be dead in a different universe than him. My West Coast Boyfriend sees me a few times a year. So the next time that he sees me, I have to enact a plan. Otherwise, the universe is going to fall apart. And it can’t be my fault that the universe falls apart.
The West Coast Boyfriend cares about the ethical concerns of animals and what it means and how he eats. He can’t know that my favorite guilty pleasure food is Chick-Fil-A. I will never say the word “Chick-Fil-A” in front of him as long as I live.
The West Coast Boyfriend is extremely interesting. All his friends are interesting too. I don’t have any friends. I’m going to make some, so that he thinks that people like me. If other people like me, he won’t realize that he’s made a mistake in liking me too.
The West Coast Boyfriend is a writer. He thinks I’m a writer too, but I can’t write. I have to pretend to be a writer now. I’m going to write a story, and another story, and a book, and another book, until I can say that I’m a writer. Then he’ll think I’m good at something.
The West Coast Boyfriend has dated models. I am not a model. So I’m going to pedicure my toes and manicure my fingers and wax my eyebrows and my mustache and my armpits and my legs and my pussy and my asshole. I’m going to shoot toxins into my forehead and under my eyes that force my muscles to stop working so there aren’t any more wrinkles. I’m going to pump chemicals into my lips and cheeks until my face looks pretty. I’m going to buy a pill that will make my vagina smell like a rose. I’m going to buy lingerie and take photos in it and post them online and pretend I’m a model. I will spend 45 minutes looking for a pose that hides my arms and my tummy and my cellulite and my double chin. I will look beautiful, and he will temporarily forget that I’m not a model.
The West Coast Boyfriend is surrounded by people who are beautiful and perfect. I am fat, and I am getting older, and I’ve started getting zits and stretch marks in places I’ve never had any before. So I will stop eating breakfast and lunch and I will scrub my body with salicylic acid. I will peel off my skin in small little strips until the stretch marks are all gone. He’ll never see my self-harm scars either. Everything will be perfect.
The West Coast Boyfriend is in good shape. I’m not. I will quit my job so that I can exercise full-time. If there’s any fat left, I will slice open my arms and belly and thighs until I can see the white fat cells and I will use a vacuum to suck them all out until I have the shape of a person who isn’t me.
The West Coast Boyfriend is a balanced and emotionally healthy person. This is the scariest one. I have to pretend I am too, but I’m bad at pretending. So I’m going to take a buzzsaw and cut open my skull. I’m going to take out my brain and use a spoon to find all the dark matter and dig it out until there’s nothing bad left. And just in case, I’m going to take a sharp knife and cut off my tongue so that I never say anything bad. I’ll never yell, and I’ll never talk, and I’ll never put my foot in my mouth. I can’t sabotage a relationship if I can’t talk.
The West Coast Boyfriend is from a different universe than I am, but he doesn’t know it. If he knew it, he would go back to his universe and leave mine. So I’m going to figure out how everything cosmic works, and then I’m going to fly into space and use my fingertips to grasp at the seams of his universe and my universe so that they’re always connected. As long as they’re connected, this might just work. He won’t know we’re from two different universes.
This is so close to being a perfect plan. The only thing I worry about is how we’ll be able to see each other while I’m busy holding together the seams of two different universes. I’ll figure out a new plan for that.
Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts
