I wept on the bathroom floor last night
I wept on the bathroom floor last night, on all fours. Snot dripped onto the new Ikea rugs that I resolved to return at that moment because the royal blue color was “too athletic.” My forehead touched the cold tile, and I twisted my neck to press my cheek against the floor. I wanted to feel the resistance of an unyielding surface, as if proving the solidity of my surroundings might disrupt the unchecked thoughts that prompted this outburst: my immature desire for permanency, for life to remain unchanged.
Yet change had occurred regardless. My hair was longer. The soft skin around my hips thinned. My bed remained empty most nights. I lathered soap into my armpits and across my stomach, the mindless act of massaging my body recalling a morning a year and a half prior—Z’s head resting on my stomach, both of us naked. He told me he felt sick, so I went to the protest alone. And the fiery tears arrived when I realized he might have lied to remain home, to see her, or another girl. We were all interchangeable despite his insistence otherwise.
For a moment, I worried that another translucent house spider might emerge from a corner and disturb my weeping spell, worsening my mood, the possibility itself enough to subdue the stream of tears. The first spider scurried out from underneath my balled up socks days earlier. I crushed it inside a square of toilet paper and tossed it into the toilet before flushing it. Avery captured the second and largest inside a glass the other night and moved it to the back porch where she smoked a joint before joining me in bed. A third spider appeared the next day in the corner near the doorway. I announced its arrival to Avery, Lisa, and Lauren after dinner. We were sitting around Avery’s laminate dining table. Her kitchen was dim, lit by a single tabletop lamp and stray light coming from the living room. An air mattress filled the space between the bookshelf and the coffee table.
Do you think the sudden proliferation of spiders is symptomatic of a more concerning issue brewing with my apartment? I asked with the same tone as when I questioned whether I should cancel the date I had planned for later that evening while we waited for the check at dinner—hoping that this conspiratorial confession would endear Lisa and Lauren and therefore earn their approval for my role in Avery’s life. Lisa ended the discussion quickly. Tell him, see you never, she said in her German accent and wiped droplets of green salsa from her hands with a napkin.
Avery was more deliberate and pragmatic addressing my fear of an impending arachnid infestation. She looked at me cautiously from the low armchair she moved from the cramped living room so that the four of us could sit together. She was like a houseplant leaning imperceptibly towards the sunlight—myself. She spoke: Maybe you have seen more spiders because they were displaced when Liv removed most of the furniture and plants from the apartment during her move. There used to be more hiding places. I pursed my lips. I didn’t kill the one today because I knew it would upset you, and I found it less worrisome because it wasn’t on the doorframe where I would have to walk underneath it.
Lauren searched for a photo of a wolf spider they saw while hiking in the Appalachians. Hundreds of live babies clung to the mother’s abdomen. I asked Avery if she could zoom in on the image because I was reluctant to touch the screen with my own fingers, as if physical proximity to the digital image might cause an unpleasant bodily sensation reminiscent of thousands of tiny, multi-legged creatures crawling up and down my limbs. And then Lisa searched through her Instagram until she found the photo of the orb weaver she discovered while gardening. Its abdomen was bulbous and mottled orange, like an old tangerine. Beautiful, Avery characteristically mumbled.
Was the source of my phobia the fear of experiencing a temporary, unpleasant sensation, being bitten, or maybe simply being in proximity with a creature that I have no ability to control beyond killing it or temporarily relocating it outside the boundaries of my apartment?
Did you know spiders are actually quite fragile? Lisa asked. Because their skeletons are on the outside. She explained that she sometimes vacuums house spiders, but worried that this likely crippled them irreversibly. Her attempts to be more humane were futile.
After Lisa and Avery returned from smoking on the porch, I asked Lisa and Lauren about their experience in Germany. Both described the homophobia they experienced daily. Germans are so judgmental. Lisa said. You can see it on their face, they look, but they pretend, ‘Oh, we are not judgmental!’ They fear anything that is different. She was unsparing about the increasingly common anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany, which she thought mirrored Americans’ growing hatred of Latin and South American immigrants. She worried about Germany’s upcoming election and Elon Musk’s influence on it. She explained that Musk hosted a recent conversation on Twitter with the leader of Germany’s far-right party, who claimed that Hitler was a ‘leftist.’ Lisa scoffed and rolled her eyes. It’s illegal to deny the holocaust in Germany. You can literally be arrested. Lauren added her indignation, and she’s a lesbian, too. She must really hate herself. None of us could think of anything more to say.
I think I need to kick you out soon. Avery announced. My guests need to sleep. She said goodbye to me on the porch and touched her lips to my cheek, something between an air kiss and a peck, as if she was wavering at the edge of a street, unsure if she could cross quickly enough to avoid being struck. I walk home alone, stepping gingerly to avoid slipping on a patch of ice invisible underneath the fresh layer of snow. When I arrived home, I fetched the duster from the laundry room and used it to gently knock the spider onto the microfiber before cautiously carrying the duster to the backdoor, where I shook it until I was certain the spider had fallen off, unbothered whether this was an act of cruelty.
It snowed two nights earlier when I left the Music Box Theater, sodden, pellet-shaped snowflakes that stung when they landed on my exposed cheeks. Someone walked several paces behind me, another movie goer, I imagined, but the hood of my coat limited my peripheral vision. I wondered if I should walk alone at night, if I was naively behaving as I would have pre-transition, unperturbed by the violence women were supposed to perpetually fear. My hands were cold despite my leather gloves. On the Belmont bus I read the news. Israel and Hamas had reportedly reached a ceasefire deal that would go into effect after being approved by Israel’s cabinet. Yet Israel continued to bomb Gaza the following day, killing 81 people.
Change, it appeared, belonged to something other than language, which created the possibility for betrayal and misunderstanding, and had to be examined constantly to determine whether it contained the truth or a verisimilitude.
Image: Alannah Farrell, Silver, 2024.