ONE
Lina
“The Missing Sock conspiracy theory,”I tell Oliver, my ex-boss and dear friend, with a full body cringe.
He blinks at me. “Thatwas the last straw?”
Behind me, Emmanuel is cackling like one of those animatronic witches people have in their front yards for Halloween. I don’t tell him he sounds like this because he would consider it a compliment.
“He streamed about it for a full forty-five minutes,” I say impatiently, raising my voice to be heard above Emmanuel’s howling. “I only meant to walk past his office, but I heard enough to get sucked in. Then I watched the whole damn thing.”
“Hisoffice?” Georgia, Oliver’s girlfriend and one of my teachers, protests.
I poke my toe into the dirt because her outrage is understandable. “Second bedroom,” I amend. Though, if you really squint, maybe the ‘Do Not Disturb—Creating Content’ sign he taped to the door gave it a certain... prestige? Enough to qualify as an office? Or at least something fancier thanthe spare room in my apartment he used to livestream his video gaming to his five die-hard followers?
We’re at Georgia and Oliver’s housewarming, sweating in the hot August sun in the backyard of the new apartment they just bought in Sunset Park. The yard is packed with their family (of whom there are approximately one hundred) and friends (some of whom happen to be PS 2 teachers). Strips of pork belly sizzle on the grill, the scent of soy sauce and garlic and vinegar and meat filling air hazy with smoke. Emmanuel’s shrieks of laughter are drawing more people over to our little circle.
“I must know more about this conspiracy theory,” Tamika begs.
“Please, yes,” Emmanuel manages in between gulps of air. “Share with the class.”
I pause for a moment, considering how much I would be able to share before Emmanuel absolutely shat on me. “I was always losing a sock of his doing our laundry,” I start. My body starts to fill with heat and adrenaline. What is this feeling? Shame? “He said there’s a global conspiracy involving washing machine manufacturers and sock companies. The washing machine manufacturers install a special compartment that sucks up socks. The socks build up in the machine, eventually breaking it, so that consumers are forced to buy new washing machinesandnew socks.”
Shame. It’s definitely shame.
Emmanuel is now rolling around in the sparse Brooklyn backyard grass.
“So let me get this straight,” starts Oliver, who has always hated Mike. “It wasn’t the colonizing of your second bedroom. It wasn’t the full-day video game streaming for all five of his followers. It wasn’t the lack of job, cooking, cleaning, chores, paying rent, utilities, or doing much of anything to contribute to a partnership or a household.” He pauses dramatically. Some of Georgia’s theatrics have clearly rubbed off on him. “It wasthe Missing Sock conspiracy theorythat made you dump your partner of two years and kick him out of your apartment?”
I rub my eyes, seriously wondering how I ended up here.
Mike was hot. Heishot—tall, dark, handsome, and tattooed. We met at a Lower East Side bar that he and his band were playing at. Two circumstances should have served as warnings. One: their show was on a school night. Two: there were no more than ten people in the audience.
But I was there randomly catching up with an old friend who lived in the neighborhood, I was horny as hell, and Mike was singing and writhing his body on stage in ways I know now an almost forty-year-old man with no real job and four roommates should decidedly not be writhing his body on a stage. Like he was Freddie Mercury performing for tens of thousands of people at Wembley Stadium, not a sad man performing for ten people at a Sad Sticky Bar in the Lower East Side on a Tuesday. But he was singing directly to me, blue eyes bypassing all ten audience members and boring directly into mine and peering deep into my soul while thrusting his hips. I suppose horny Old Lina thought all this was sexy as hell. New and Improved Lina has grown to understand it was tragic and seriously distressing.
He was likely searching for my weaknesses and figuring out how best to exploit them.This woman is a sucker for taking care of tall, dark, handsome, tattooed men, he probably thought. I must have her. On second thought, he probably did not think this, because he had the IQ of a naked mole rat.
So sweet, I remember thinking, he just needs some love and care and support and attention. Someone just needs to remind him to change his toothbrush every few months and clean his hair out of the shower drain and not to use a fork to get toast out of the toaster.This someone somehow ended up paying for his entire livelihood with a city employee salary and vacuuming up the ash ground into the rug from all his spliff smoking in the second bedroom.
I was thirty-three—I was horny, but I also wanted to settle down, get married, maybe have some kids. I was looking for a partner. He was looking for a mother.
“Yes,” I sigh. “I guess it was,” I begrudgingly answer Oliver’s rhetorical question.
Emmanuel’s partner Nick finally picks him up off the ground and brushes him off.
“You were always defending him when we were shitting on him. Can we officially designate this time as Shit On Mike time?” Emmanuel asks eagerly.
“We’ve all been dying to participate without Lina interference,” Georgia adds.
Something else I’ve realized over the course of this two-year relationship is that my friends have escalated various Mike musings from gentle noticings to full on shit-talking. Towards the end, Oliver refused to even hear Mike’s name. “Fuck that guy, Lina. He’s a waste of space. You’re too good for him.”
I realize my defense had also escalated. I had doubled down on trying to explain and prove the merits of his sensitivity, creativity, and… vivacity. I’ve now come to understand that those merits were actually deficiencies. He was overly sensitive, and like a toddler would throw a tantrum if things didn’t go his way. Hethoughthe was creative but was really just a subpar, lazy musician, song writer, and content creator. ‘Vivacious’ was just a nicer way of saying he was far too loud and extremely annoying.
“Let’s all share the thing we hated the most about Mike,” Mia, another third-grade teacher of mine, offers. Her fiancé Elias, currently standing with an arm slung around her shoulder, enthusiastically agrees.
“Me first!” yells Emmanuel. “I personally hated that Mike would mansplaineverything. Ev. Ree. Thing. He tried to mansplain Lip Sync For Your Life to me.”
No one knows what he is talking about, which even further proves his point regarding Mike, I guess.
