Each other

 I.

Orange juice. We used it as a kind of cure for insanity. Greg made it in the morning and then we would all run off to our prospective studios, and sit there in our prospective studios and know that we could hear the air conditioning and that we could taste our tongue in our mouth and that we worshiped all the things.

Mostly ourselves.

“We should form a jazz group,” Greg said in the morning the other day, and yes, yes Greg we should form a jazz group YES WE SHOULD FORM A JAZZ GROUP TOM. But who has time for that?

“Yes,” we said, especially the girl with the very curly very short hair who made me think of the word “very.” I hated her.

Jiminy just did not respond to the suggestion about the jazz group because we knew he would be too busy in the graphic design studio doing whatever the hell they do in there, especially being genuine which was something that other people did not do was “be genuine,” and then also drinking snickerdoodle flavored black coffee.

Greg sipped his orange juice and felt the orange juice on his tongue.

We do not talk for very long in the morning, there is always just the “Maybe you will run into someone downstairs, or maybe not” and then there is the, “Wow, Greg’s doing his laundry again because he’s gay, who has time for that,” and then the orange juice part which is nice. THANKS GREG.

I actually like Greg a lot. If he were a word he would be a misspelled word because he does not make sense

Like

Th

Where you forget the “e”

Or like when something is typed out on an old keyboard

Or like when at the end of a conversation on the phone you are breaking up.

I like to think that trying to understand other people is some kind of a cure for insanity, like orange juice, like camp fires when the smoke is doing smoke things and just being magical, even without a chimney, which is something else but where is the chimney sweeper, Greg, where is the freaking chimney sweeper who is wearing ashes on his face like in Mary Poppins and has been blown in from the West Wind?

We should have goals. I thought about this more and spun around in my spinny chair.

“We should have goals,” I said to the group, the group being Greg and Jiminy and the girl who makes me think of the word “very,” I feel that this girl could maybe beat me at a spelling bee and that’s not ok, that makes me very angry, but it is the kind of angry where you want to be happy for the other person but you don’t want to be, kind of like how I am happy that Greg makes orange juice but not happy about the jazz group idea.

Maybe I am jealous of jazz.

And how the other day we went to see that one jazz ensemble with the swing hot black trumpet player and we could see his daughters in the front row looking up at his with those big trumpet eyes like a bell or like shining Christmas ornaments in the fall, when you know that the joy is coming soon and maybe it’s already here but it should not be already here, and there is a kind of wistfulness that cannot be even the back of a canvas it is too sacred.

“We should have goals,” I repeated, because no one was listening. Greg was feeding his cat and the girl was writing something in small letters in a journal and Jiminy was about to go walk up the stairs

“We can’t do extra stuff guys,” I said, “I barely have time for the stuff I have to do,” and they listened to me—I know they did—and maybe thought it was sensible and maybe not and we all sipped our orange juice and went to our studios and listened to the air conditioning.

II.

Greg’s daughter is scared of a lot of things. It is strange being flat mates with a lot of people in a very big city because they also have families, like a daughter, and Jiminy has his aunt who comes to visit and brings a bunch of wine with her and she is such a cougar.

I’m pretty sure the girl with pretty hair has no one. She watches a lot of sit coms. She buys nice toilet paper for everyone, and she buys naan bread for everyone, and she is a team player but she could probably beat me at a spelling bee and I’m not a fan of that. Truly.

But like, sometimes I see Greg's daughter in the kitchen and we talk.

“How’s school, Maggie?”

“Horrible,” she says, and she is making herself a tomato sandwich.

“Why?” I ask, but my voice is monotone because no coffee yet.

She ignores me for a second but that is because she is spreading mayonnaise on her tomato sandwich.

“I don’t know”

Ok.

I asked her again the next morning and she had already made her tomato sandwich. I figured this would be a good strategy to get her to talk more. And plus I had already had my coffee, yay, and Greg had already gotten the orange juice ready and everything and my little glass of it was sitting at the bar because PEOPLE CARE.

“How’s school, Maggie?”

“Horrible,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“People scare me,”

Ok. I get that. Same girl, same.

I just nodded and laughed a little bit inside and then I said, “Do I scare you?”

“Nah.”

I cut the rest of her tomato for her because the knife looked a little too sharp.

III.

Sometimes I like to make grilled cheese for my flat mates. Everyone comes home on time when I make grilled cheese because I make a really good grilled cheese. I have someone grate the cheese and butter the bread, and we buy various types of bread and we have been listening to the air conditioning all day so we are bored. I have tried talking to other people about what they do in their studios and it is all a very vague and wonderment type of thing. Like different descriptions of the moon in poetry, how they are all kind of similar and moony but you can’t see the moon that that writer is describing anyway. TOO BAD SO SAD.

Tonight I decided to make a thing of it.

“What are we all most afraid of,” I asked after dinner, because it had turned into one of those sorts of conversations where we were just enough bored of each other that we had to make some sort of an effort to get along.

“Being selfish,” someone said. I think it was Greg who said that. What a funny person.

“Being alone,” the “very” girl said. Basic, I thought. Lols.

“I am afraid of bears,” I admitted, “I have been having dreams that very large bears are eating my family in the backyard, and I am watching from the porch.”

Everyone kind of nodded a bit. “Wow, that’s a lot,” said Greg.

And then it was Maggie’s turn, and she piped up quickly and quietly as she will. “People scare me,” she said.

And we all just kind of nodded a little, and recognized that it was true. We were all a little bit afraid of each other, or maybe very afraid of each other, but the orange juice Greg makes in the morning is a kind of cure for insanity.