Dance of Hours

I hated morning shifts. Most of my favorite customers came in later in the day, so I got stuck with the morning weirdos instead.

            “Gummy bears,” a white guy said. His shaggy brown hair covered his forehead and brushed against his brow. He placed the palms of his hands on the counter top. “Five pounds, I guess.” This guy ordered five pounds of gummy bears.

I did all the heavy lifting. My stomach filled my lap and hung over my knees, so I rocked forward and fought to get to my feet, one hand against the counter to brace myself. I held myself steady, belly pressed against the display case glass, my legs shaking beneath me. Short of breath, I grabbed my inhaler from the countertop. At my size, I was supposed to be on an oxygen tank any time I got up from a relaxed position, but the mask was an ugly piece of shit that totally fucked up my aesthetic. Twenty-two-years-old looking like a low budget sci-fi alien with plastic tubes and shit hanging off me? No thanks.

“Fucking…oh my god…” I panted and placed my hand over my broad chest to test my racing heart. My heart beat fast but even.

I double-bagged a pair of white paper sacks and opened the jar of gummy bears on the counter. I flipped it and let the jar fill the bag. I heard myself wheezing the whole time. Being on my feet for that long exhausted me and moving five pounds of anything was a workout. I pushed a heavy bag across the counter. I don’t think this is what Mom had in mind when she told me to get some exercise. I would’ve put my arms behind my head to help catch my breath, but it was easier to just lean against the display glass and hope it’d hold out. I hit my inhaler. Fuck asthma.

            The customer stared across the counter. Some fatphobic comment cooked behind his wide eyes, his flushed cheeks, and his gator-like crooked smile. His mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t say shit audible.

I took out an invisible pair of earbuds, wondering if he’d repeat himself. No dice. I told him his total and swiveled around the tablet screen for him to use. He needed to pick a payment option.

            “That’s the bag.” My voice had that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup evenness and charm, which was also my favorite candy. I was milk chocolate and peanut-butter-smooth. What’s not to like?

People were like candy in a lotta ways. I didn’t know the gummy bear guy, but I knew he wasn’t a gummy bear. Way too weird to be a gummy bear, he had to be something tart and gummy–not cool enough to be a Sour Punch Straw, though.

He opened his mouth and made a couple of soft, monosyllabic grunts. He floundered–a Big Mouth Billy Bass with fried audio.

            I continued, hoping he’d snap outta it, “...that you ordered.”

Five-pounds-of-gummy-bears-guy turned Mountain Dew Code Red red, though, and he started to sweat and shake. His anxiety was giving me anxiety, which made me especially anxious because I have clinical anxiety!

            “Oh, yeah. That gummy bear…s…” He hissed, making the bear(s) plural. I wanted to reach out and grab his shoulders and turn him away from me. I’d find that big metal key in his back, wind it up, and send him marching out the door.

            I agreed. “The gummy bears.” I reached up and straightened my septum, because the silver ring crooked to my left.

This guy fumbled out his wallet only after I went from looking at my nose to looking at him. He cussed and flipped through his duct-tape wallet and dropped punch cards from Burrito Iglesia and Stormy Smoothie on the counter, literally littering litters of literature which promised promos and proposals…all of which had expired months ago. I knew every specialty item at Burrito Iglesia and none of the ones on those punch cards were still on the menu.

            I had to say or do something. I thought I might spontaneously combust if I didn’t. “Just–”

            “Yes?” His eyes shimmered and glistened.

            “Just take the gummy bears, dude,” I said. My legs can’t support this much woman for more than a few seconds. I sat down on my stool, a little rounded felt cylinder that probably used to be an ottoman or something–chairs with backs and legs bent and broke.

“I like your top,” the awkward customer said. “I’m Liam, by the way.” That comment gave him a chance, stroking my ego.

When a guy compliments a girl’s top, he’s telling her that he’s been staring at her chest. I doubted the cropped tanktop with Fat Buddha on it and “I have the body of a god” printed around him, was his cup of tea. He liked the girls. I wanted to push them together and draw more attention to them, but I felt shy as soon as the thought crossed my mind. I totally froze up. He wandered off with his gummy bears and left me tongue-tied.

My therapist low-key called me a narcissist a few days beforehand, so it tracked that I’d start to see how handsome the shaggy white boy was after his compliment.

♢♢♢

            A few days earlier, Linda Knoap slipped up with me.

She was an ugly white lady. I used the word “ugly”, which I reserve for people who deserve it. Contrary to popular belief, ugly isn’t a word you apply to someone who’s unattractive. “Ugly” isn’t about the color of your skin, the size of your waist, or how big your nose is. Ugly is internal, but sometimes that ugly is so cancerous that you can see it on peoples’ faces. That was the kinda ugly Linda was.

“And what exactly did you want to do to your coworker? Sheila?” Linda asked.

            I tried to be open with her. I tried for Mom’s sake, because she gave up the beaucoup for this lady. “Shelby. I wanted to kill her. I really did–”

            “That’s a lot of anger and violence to really want to kill someone.” She clicked her tongue three times and looked straight into my eyes. Apathy poured out of her–she’d hated my fat ass the moment she met me. Therapy-turned-circus vibed like a root canal from a Sonic carhop–this wasn’t what I ordered.

            “Linda, did you just fucking interrupt me? Isn’t it supposed to be my turn to talk? And did you interrupt me to say that I’m angry?”

            Linda’s little eyes were blue beads on a sunken, bony face. She looked like a pasty skeleton with a condom stretched over it. It frustrated me that I met with Linda every other week so she could tell me that my feelings sounded dangerous to my mental health. She cleared her throat to keep her Junior Mint candy intonation. Junior Mints are a candy that feel comfortable and people think they like them until they order ⅛ of a lb and are forced to face the fact that there isn’t a lower-tier mint chocolate candy out there than a Junior Mint. After a few handfuls, it’s like eating Hershey’s with a Colgate chaser.

            “How’s your weight loss journey going?” Linda asked.

I preferred reading, watching movies, playing video games, and I happened to actually enjoy eating, so that wasn’t coming off the table. If I got tired of reading, watching movies, playing games, or doomscrolling, I’d hold up my phone camera and do my best Rocky III Ivan Drago impression: “I will break you.” The point is that Linda missed the mark with this weight-loss-TLC/MTV/ABC-bullshit. I snarfed down a few Reese’s Cups and dug into my party-sized bag for another handful to start unwrapping. “There isn’t one. Are you even listening? This is me-time. I’m talking.”

            “You don’t see how your behavior and lack of interest in meaningful activities and interactions could affect others? This narcissistic behavior, acting like your insecurities and anxieties don’t stem from your health problems or your anger or your trauma…it’s going to continue to put you in a bad place.” She jabbed her clipboard with her pencil without the nerve of a killer. A ladybug would’ve crawled away perturbed from such a flaccid assault. The wooden thumps sounded in triplicate and quit as lackadaisical as they’d begun.

            “Bad place, Linda? Do you mean here? In this fucking room?”

            She didn’t even take back what she said: narcissist.

            “Let’s pivot, in that case. Don’t you think most people would consider your attire to be inappropriate? There may be more flattering choices for your wardrobe than pieces which accentuate your…mid-section.” She set her arms wide when she said “mid-section,” bearing a big invisible boulder.

            I found it more offensive that she didn’t just say “belly.” She skirted around it like it was a bad word. Linda wouldn’t call me “fat” or “mixed” or “short” or “vain,” just like she wouldn’t call me “smart” or “literate” or “funny” or “pretty.” She suggested that these are things that I think I am. She had no problem with “morbidly obese” or “African American” or “narcissistic.” She also suggested that I had an inappropriate relationship with food and drink and candy, as if I connected more to things that I like than people I don’t like. Imagine that!

            “I consider your affinity for beige to be wildly inappropriate,” I told her, admiring her khakis, her brown turtleneck, and her brown hair that was the wrong color to be naturally brown–it was that K-Pop-Idol-Brown color. She must’ve been terrified of gray–a hue between black and white. Me.

            “You’re back on the offensive, Mindy. You won’t look inward. How much time do you spend with positive self-talk? As much or less time than you spend on your hair every day?” Linda asked.

            When you admit to someone that you spend thirty minutes to an hour on your hair every morning, they’re not supposed to use that as ammunition later. If I couldn’t trust her with my daily routine, why should I trust her with anything more personal?

            “I’m taking the offensive? You’re literally attacking me.” I ate another fistful of Reese’s and rolled my eyes.

            “You feel that I’ve taken the offensive and now you’re on the defensive. Why do you feel that everything has to be a battle?” Linda asked. She cocked her head to the right every time she thought she stumped me. It didn’t matter if I had an immediate rebuttal, because she had already decided that she won.

            “It’s not a fucking battle. It’s a game and you have the ball,” I said.

♢♢♢

Outside of games in therapy, I moved like the ballerina hippo from Fantasia. Not as cartoonishly weightless or coordinated, but I pushed my way between seated patrons–my back ached from holding up my weight. The floorboards bowed beneath as I stomped across the room. My belly led the way. I pushed between the seated guests, earning glares and cold, malicious whispers. I felt kinda like a snowplow or something, working my way towards an empty table by the windows. I used to be more careful and anxious about plowing through people, but you’re not gonna tell me that they didn’t see me coming! I breathlessly wheezed a “‘scuse me.” It was them or me, and I’d pick me every time.

            “Hey,” Liam said.

I forgot he was still in the shop. I wiped some sweat from my brow, and plopped myself down into a couple of chairs. The chairs bent beneath me and the backs of the chairs warped outward. It took me a bit to even respond, weak and breathless, “Wh-what?”

            He stood up from his table with his five pounds of gummy bears and moved over to my table. Liam sat across from me in one chair. His fingers wiggled and his face got redder when I looked at him. I started gassing myself up: he came over to talk to me, because I wasn’t just some fat girl. I was a hot, fat girl with great hair and I always smelled like cinnamon rolls–my perfume took care of that. In rom-coms, the funny fat friend showed up to distract from the sexual tension. In real life, the funny fat friend got hit on by an awkward white boy, but neither knew what to do about it.

            “Okay. Why are you talkin’ to me?” I asked. I thought it, so I wanted him to say it–”hot.”

            “Something about you…?” Liam’s voice got higher pitched. He sounded like a Nerds Rope–gooey, awkward, and malleable with a bunch of tart crunches along the way. He drummed his fingers on the table.

            “Why me and why not Shelby?” I asked. I rolled my eyes in the direction of my skinny, busty relief at the counter.

            Shelby glared in my direction and took a picture of me from across the store. I’d be on her Story on Instagram within ten minutes with some lame joke at my expense as a caption. She smiled at her phone before finally helping the customer in front of her.

Liam lacked charisma, but he got lucky with his response, rizzless as it was. “You’re hotter than her.”

I wished that Shelby had heard him say that. It wasn’t a sweet or a smooth thing to say, but it was the phrase that had been echoing in my head every time that Shelby adjusted her cleavage for a bigger tip from a customer or targeted me for my weight. Here’s a secret, I turn to butter when you stroke my ego.

♢♢♢

Linda sighed. She removed her reading glasses and lowered her clipboard. I glimpsed her incoherent shorthand. Linda tilted her clipboard towards her dumpy beige sweater. “I want to challenge you, Mindy, because I don’t think you’ve challenged yourself this week.”

            “This week” was an afterthought. She said that instead of saying that she didn’t think I’ve ever fucking challenged myself. I measured what kinda -ist or -ic someone was by how they looked at me. Fatphobics looked at my belly and worked their way up to my face, racists looked at my face then studied the rest of me for further complaints, and sexists looked at my clothing then began to study the girl underneath, but they all studied my structure for cracks. The tricky ones were the ones who looked past me like I wasn’t there. I assumed those people were two or more of the previous fraternities. Linda made eye contact with my belly button whenever I came in her door.

            Linda stared at my stomach and raised an eyebrow. “Get your heartrate up for at least twenty minutes a day, form a morning habit that does not pertain to your compulsions regarding your hair, and try to find something to wear that’s more flattering to your appearance. I think it’s good that you’re concerned with making yourself appealing to others, but you’re going about it in a way that hurts you more than it helps you. Three steps, Mindy. I think you can manage it. Truly.”

♢♢♢

What a vote of confidence.

            “Am I doing okay?” Liam asked.

            I spoke through a mouthful of fudge. “Great. Keep it up, dude.”

            “I have a confession to make…” he said. He didn’t even know my first name.

            I filled the pause in his confession with my name. “Mindy.”

            “Mindy, I don’t want this to sound creepy, but I saw you through the front window and…I didn’t come in for gummy bears. I just wanted to talk to you and I didn’t know how. God, I hope I don’t sound like some horror-movie-psycho. That’s a confession between me and you.” He got cuter post-confessional. Even the way he flirted had some stilted class to it, like he had to be invited in.

I absolutely loved horror movies, even if I’m every demographic of the girl who dies first. The Final Girl never looked anything like me, but I exposed my neck to this sexy, shaggy vampire, anyway. “Do you smoke weed?” I asked.

The moment he said “yes,” we got up from our chairs and headed outside. He pulled his car up to the back alley. His car was about the size of my GT Ford Fusion, but it was a Toyota and there was a dent in the rear passenger door. I didn’t know what kinda car it was, because it wasn’t a GT Ford Fusion. I opened his passenger door, put the seat down, and scooted it all the way forward. The workout almost killed me. I threw open that dented door and plopped into the backseat of his car. The folded front seat served as a table to rest my belly on, which took a lot of weight off my back. I wiped the sweat from my brow and set my book next to me–In a Lonely Place.

            “You okay?” Liam asked. He passed back a blunt he’d rolled in the time it’d taken me to exit the store through the back door.

            “I’d be better…if you parked closer to the door…” I snatched the blunt from him. Smoking weed was best done at home through a series of dryer sheets in the guest bathroom, as Liam’s car was too small–not fat girl accessible–and smelled like feet. I wasn’t into the toejam scratch-and-sniff, but it was the familiar smell of my cousin Mac’s living room carpet without the addition of odorous spoiled milk.

He blushed. “You’re sitting really far away from me, right now…it’s a bit of a reach for the pass,” he said.

I took two puffs and passed him the billowing blunt. I swallowed the smoke and let it trail outta my nostrils. The silver septum did something funny to the shape of the smoke. The twin plumes corked and twisted into spirals, as mercury thiocyanate would when exposed to an open flame–snakes climbing towards the sky, before gravity reminds them that it’s in their nature to plummet.

That blunt went back and forth until a little roach remained. Liam grinned at me the whole time. I couldn’t hear myself talking, but I talked about candy. I informed him about how awful Whoppers–the candy–were when he stopped me.

            “Would you go on a date with a guy like me?” Liam asked.

I was blunted. Without the sharpness of my wit, I managed the charm of a baseball bat to the kneecaps with my answer.

            “I mean, if this was Marry, Fuck, Kill, I wouldn’t kill you, but I don’t think I’d marry you, either.” I removed a warm block of fudge from my skirt pocket, plastic wrapped to keep it from collecting lint.

His bloodshot eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth dropped, nonexistent lips pulled tight against his straight, white teeth. “What does that have to do with going on a date?” Every colorful nerd along the red liquorice rope marked a point where his voice sounded ready to break. He coiled in his seat, peeking around at me with the stature of a towel being rung dry.

            “Nothing. That’s the point, Liam.” I sighed, irritated by his obliviousness. He was like Batman solving a puzzle from the Riddler–an acrostic isn’t a fucking puzzle, Detective Comics, it’s literally a poetic form.

  Liam crawled onto the collapsed passenger seat, and my stomach gave him little space to squeeze. I had a mouthful of fudge when he perched there, most of his skinny little body disappeared behind my belly. On his knees, Liam ducked his head, his eyes moving back and forth and up and down. He appeared to be trying to digest what he saw, as if my entirety proved difficult to reconcile. He didn’t take in any particular part of me, yet he struggled to take in all of me. He got closer to the ceiling and pushed his ass up against the dashboard. My eyes fixated on the defined bulge in his light blue jeans. I watched the serpent peer above the waistband of his jeans and met eyes with a massive erection.

            “Here? I’m…ummm…uh…yes, please.” At that moment, I couldn’t think of anything sexier than getting it on in the backseat of a Toyota. I watched him carefully as he removed a condom from his wallet–protected sex as currency. He pulled off his black Rick and Morty t-shirt and discarded it against his front windshield. He didn’t have enough room to kick off his shoes or remove his jeans completely, so he tossed his belt and unzipped his fly, denim and briefs slid down around his knees.

I fumbled at my little top, gasping by the time I got it off. I pulled my sports bra up and over my head, and chucked the black garment across the driver’s headrest. I fell onto my back, without a single muscle in my body to stop the clumsy flop. R&B started playing in my head–specifically, “Put Your Records On.”

            Liam fell into me. The fact that I form-fit his car’s interior did little to dissuade him. He kissed me like he was half-asleep, but it wasn’t long afterwards that he took my legs and raised them up on either side of him. He folded up against the dashboard to position himself on the passenger seat. He pulled down my skirt, finding the elastic waistband to be especially tight. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him. I imagined him taller, stronger, darker-skinned, shaved head, scars, smiling…I imagined one of the candy store’s regulars, Ray, pushing my cushion.

            “Fuck, Ray! Fuck!” I kicked the car radio, blasting the classic station. Sweet cherry pie! The whole world tilted and rocked back and forth below and above me. He roared and snarled. I bit into my hand to muffle my high-pitched cries. Together, we became animals.

I hit my inhaler as soon as the world quit spinning and shaking. I combed my hair between my fingers and returned some volume to it before wiping fudge from around my mouth onto the back of my left hand.

            Liam dropped the driver’s seat down and folded it. He laid next to me, squeezed into the tiny space. “Who’s Ray?”

            I pretended not to hear him. I’d rather gaslight him than tell him that I had a crush on a firefighter who came in during my shifts and loved jellybeans. I convinced myself that he didn’t need to know about Ray.

            We stared at the roof of his car, discerning the texture and navigating aimlessly across it. He didn’t ask about Ray again.

            The guilt that followed, though, was for Ray. Ray was just some guy who liked to talk during my shifts and order jellybeans, but I felt like I’d broken some kinda promise to him.

♢♢♢

“That’s what’s fucked up. This is a regular thing, now. I mean, you don’t know this or anything about me, but he’s not my first. It’s…it’s just been a minute. It’s not regular fucked up, either. It’s fucked up like when Oedipus finds out who he married. It’s fucked up like the sexual tension between Luke and Leia. It’s not incest or nothin’, but, I mean, like…I literally picture Ray every time we fuck,” I said. I rocked my right foot. Ball, heel, heel, ball, ball, heel, heel, ball.

            “You…I…?” Linda hadn’t asked me anything, yet. I walked in and she got out her clipboard and prepared her questions and I poured over her like a fucking hurricane.

            “His name is Liam Knoap and he’s…he’s all right. I’ve had better, but he’s fun. I feel a little bad, I guess. He’s really serious about us and…I’m really not,” I said. My excited rocking ceased.

            “Mindy, I would not recommend an impulsive series of hookups or finding any new boyfriends in your current emotional climate. We’re working on you. What you are describing sounds unhealthy for both of you,” Linda said. She talked so fucking slow. The-ents-are-going-to-war slow. Steven Seagal-doing-anything slow. Me-crossing-the-alley-to-smoke-weed-in-the-back-of-Liam’s-car slow. That build-up. The dam meant to control and harness the power of an unstoppable liquid force. Damned from the moment God strutted across the starting line in Her rubber shorts and fired the flare gun into the air with a wink and a kiss.

            “Ha! That’s fine, because he’s not my boyfriend,” I said.

She pursed her nonexistent lips. I remembered in the quietude of my reply that Linda’s last name was Knoap–it was scrawled across the diplomas and certificates which hung around the walls of her office. On her desk, little picture frames displayed Linda with a young boy with shaggy brown hair. Her son, Liam Knoap, wore a fake smile in these pictures–not the one he showed me at the candy store. Her pencil scribbled away. I imagined she was drawing me as an over-stuffed animal with a mangy dog snarling and ripping out that cotton-filling-sense-of-worth. He was not my “boyfriend.”

Linda’s pencil-thin eyebrows flatlined and her brow wrinkled. Finally, she cared about what I had to say. It felt better than it should’ve, seeing her squirm behind her desk.

            “We’re friends with benefits. I’m not about to catch feelin’s. Like, you know the hippo with the pink tutu from Fantasia? You think she’s gonna be official with that alligator or just have a good time?” I pictured Liam holding me up with his tiny body, as I kicked out a leg and fluttered my eyelashes. It didn’t matter if gravity caught up and I’d fall, because the present thrills took consequence, dropped it in a box, and taped that box shut without punching any holes in the top for air.

            “You’re…someone’s going to get hurt, Mindy.” Linda placed her palm over her mouth, as if her thin, twitching lips would give away her growing disdain any more than her beady, watery eyes. She meant that Liam might get hurt. The Fantasia reference didn’t land.

Liam was a Nerds Rope. “He’s a fun novelty, but I’m not out here tryin’ to break hearts. He’s just for fun.” He knew that. He had to know that, already.

♢

June 21, 2024