Harmony

by Marisa Crane

Most mornings I have to pee outside like a dog. One of my four roommates is always in the bathroom. I don’t typically give a shit until later when I find blades of grass stuck between my lips, unsure as to how long they’ve been there. I keep my bottle of cellulite serum on a plastic chair by the fence. I like how it burns my thighs and ass cheeks. That must mean it’s working.

If it’s a Monday or Wednesday, I go to therapy, but lately, all my therapist does is tell me to go to AA even though I haven’t once mentioned drinking. She’s at least more helpful than my mother who took a vow of silence back in ‘99 when my other mom left. Before the vow, she taught my sister and I how to despise ourselves. She did grant us that kindness. After dinner, my mother would unbutton her top button and pinch her stomach skin. She’d say things like “I wasn’t always this size, you know. You should have seen me as a cheerleader. 5 ft 6, barely 105 pounds.” It was hard not to hate her.

As far as I knew, there was always a buy two, get one free deal on Spankies at Walmart and when my mother gave them to us, my sister and I were supposed to say, “Thank you” instead of “We want American Girl dolls,” which is what we said on more than one occasion. I wore the Spankies even though they were three sizes too big. I wanted my mom to look me in the eye and say, “I love the person that you’ve become.” But even then, I knew it was an unrealistic desire. She was too wrapped up in her own delusions to understand that I needed her.

The thing is, the not eating was never what bothered me. I was motivated by things other than food. And the arm hair came off easily enough, thanks to the home waxing kits. It was the having to stand on the bathroom stool to get a proper view of my body that disoriented me the most. Our bathroom mirror was small—whenever I stood on the stool, I was just a ghost-pale body without a head. I had nightmares about my sister keeping my head in her purse even though she didn’t have a purse. Me screaming, “Why did you get to keep your head?” and her snickering that way she did whenever her pain had been redistributed to me.

*

This Sunday I stay up all night through the Sunday Scaries and into Monday. I’m too lazy to pee before Mel and them wake up at some ungodly hour—there are too many first-time gay porn videos to sift through. By the time I’ve rubbed myself raw, Jerry is in the bathroom gelling his hair and listing off all the reasons he’s qualified to bartend at Lickety Split’s, the bowling alley. I think I hear him say, “I’m better than a flamingo at balancing, see?” Out front, I pee on a bird of paradise, only this time I pee standing up. I know that sounds like a lie but it’s not. It’s easy to do, you just have to flex down there. As I’m pulling up my sweats, a sun-wrinkled blonde comes around looking for Mel. She asks if she still lives here and I fear someone is after Mel so I tell the woman that as a general rule, I don’t associate with Aries. She thanks me for my time and like an astrological app, she warns me not to get involved in any upcoming court hearings. Once she leaves, I scoop up the package on our welcome mat and leave it at Mel’s door even though it’s addressed to me. I’m not interested in any more of my mother’s apologies.

After my other mom left, nothing really changed except instead of calling the house phone from inside the house to get my attention, my mom would write note after note and leave them on the kitchen counter. Be home by 10. Stay away from weed. Check the mail. Pick me up a Diet Pepsi. If anyone calls, I’m not here. You didn’t hear this from me, but cocaine curbs your appetite. What book are you reading today? Why do you ignore my notes? I wish you’d stop moping, you have nothing to be depressed about. You’re so beautiful when you smile. I miss the feeling of missing things.

I love you forever and always. 

Another side effect of her silence was that Blair and I were given front-row seats to my mother’s one-woman photo album tour. She had what, forty photo albums stuffed in the hallway closet? She’d point to her high school waist and hips with nerve-chewed fingers. All the boyfriends had long hair and stoned eyes. They spent time kissing her until they didn’t. When my other mother came along, it was a surprise to everyone, but especially my mom. She didn’t fight her feelings, though. According to her, she was thrilled to finally get a taste of what her straight friends had been feeling all this time.

“I felt at ease,” she’d said, a small smile creeping across her face. “Turns out I wasn’t defective after all.”

I knew what she meant. When I started kissing my classmates at sleepovers, I felt a new and unparalleled calm. My entire world was cracked open like an egg on the edge of a pan.

The first time I made a girl come, I felt all-powerful. That look on her face of giving herself up to me—what could be better?

*

My best friend Drive is on a 100-day no drinking detox so lunch after the therapist is boring. She says she’s doing this in order to uncover lost memories, that when her friend reached 40 days, he started recalling all kinds of things from his childhood. I tell her that I think that sounds like a horrible idea, then I take two shots of Captain Morgan. When she laughs, she laughs twice—once for her understanding and once for her misunderstanding.

Once again my therapist spots me at Pico’s, which happens to be located directly below her office. She makes the sign of the cross even though she’s agnostic then sits across the room and orders a margarita. I forgot to mention that I walk my therapist around on a leash sometimes. Nowhere gratuitous. Just around the office, with the shades pulled down. She likes it when I scratch behind her ears. I like it when she eats Lucky Charms from my cupped hands. She doesn’t want anyone to know about us, so I send a second margarita over to her table and Drive puts her sunglasses on and shields her face with her hand.

Drive says boredom comes from either too much control or not enough control. Drive is on one of those enlightenment kicks reserved solely for white people who take a trip to India to learn about meditation and then return home wearing a lot of colorful headbands. She looks around then whispers that I won’t get better if I don’t find a new therapist who has at least heard of boundaries, but I don’t want a new therapist. She’s hotter than you’d expect a therapist to be. It’s almost unfair. She looks like Kristen Stewart if Kristen Stewart were twenty years older and had more than one facial expression to work with. She hugs me when I need her to, except for the times that she refuses. I’m so glad Drive made out with her three years ago at Pride or else I never would have met her.

“It’s not like I have actual feelings for her,” I say, pretending to examine the menu. “There’s just little room in my brain for anything else.”

“One thing I learned in my travels is that you have to know who you are when no one’s looking,” she says, fixing her lipstick in her makeup mirror.

*

“So, how did you find me anyway?” my therapist had asked at the start of our first session. All I could picture was Drive and her pressed against each other, their ravenous mouths searching. I hated that particular combination of horny and jealous.

“Oh, you know. The internet.”

“But how did you select me? Of all the available therapists,” she said, uncrossing her legs. Her eyes met then held mine. Sweat dripped down my ribcage. My clit throbbed.  

It struck me as a weird question. It felt very intimate, as if she was fishing for a compliment. That’s how I knew I’d be able to possess her. I didn’t need for her to love me, I just needed her to give me access to her Top 25 Most Played playlist.

The first time we hooked up, two sessions later, I was giving her a play-by-play of sex with my roommate, Mel, under the guise of trying to figure out our relationship status, and before I knew it, my therapist, whose name is Harmony—I call her Harm for short—stuck her hand down her jeans without even unbuttoning them, that’s how skinny she is. She hates when I call her Harm and I hate when she actually tries to treat me.

“Forget this ever happened,” she said, redoing her ponytail, her lip bitten raw. I put my arms around her thin waist, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine that I was more her than me.

*

After Pico’s, I go home and get drunk with Mel in the backyard. We smoke a lot of cigarettes and throw the butts into the construction site next door and make it all make sense for a while. Instead of asking about my childhood, she asks how often I dream my teeth are falling out. All the time, all the time.

Mel watches the sun kiss the horizon and I pinch my belly fat under my sweatshirt. I imagine taking a knife and slicing it off in huge wet chunks. I imagine making soap out of my fat like Tyler Durden in Fight Club. I want Harm to want me to scrub her down in the shower.

*

Next session, I tell Harm about my old job. I want her to know what she’s up against here.

“I wrote about deals and my boss seemed to think it was appropriate to pay me $90,000 to do so,” I say, trying to impress her.

I tell her how we had one stirrer for all twelve of us. It was the office stirrer. We kept it in a plastic cup labeled “stirrer.” When I got hired, I was warned never to throw it out or else the boss would have my head. For months it was all I could focus on. I wrote deals about coffee stirrers instead of cell phones. I drew still life after still life of the stirrer in its home. I created an astrological chart for the stirrer (Taurus sun, Leo rising, Gemini moon). One day I couldn’t help myself. I tossed the stirrer in the recycling bin and then I was graciously shown out the back.

“I’d ask how you feel but I just bought these succulents,” says Harm, picking up Mercury, her favorite.

Later that night, I call Drive and tell her everything Harm has ever said to me, down to the frequency with which she’s greeted me with a hey instead of hello. “It must mean something, right?” I ask. “Right?” But Drive has fallen asleep meditating.

*

I tell Harm that I never did reach heroin-chic skinny, that my body was born to carry weight.

“What would you do if you were that thin?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. I shrug and pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time. Thirty minutes left.

She looks extra good today.

“Would it make you happy?” she asks.

Even though we’ve already slept together, I’m still not convinced that she actually wants me. I tell myself that it’s just a silly fantasy, that I’m simply imagining the greed in her eyes. There must be a reason she won’t kiss me. I start to dissociate before I can conjure up an answer.

“You know, body dysmorphia is like a fun house without an exit,” I say, hovering next to my body.

“So, no?”

“Of course not,” I say.

Twenty minutes later she is reapplying her lipstick and saying “Forget this ever happened.”

*

I tell Harm that I don’t necessarily want to die but I do want to lie down on train tracks whenever I see them.

“You should really try talking to your mom,” she says. “I’m sure she misses you.”

“We do talk. She sends me shirts she got with her Kohl’s credit card. They have cacti and moons on them and they smell like cranberries. Then I send her memes about the evils of capitalism,” I say.

“Wow,” says Harm, smirking slightly. “Forget this ever happened,” I say.

*

Next time I bring a flogger, fresh from Pleasures and Treasures. She counts the pain level on her fingers. Four is her sweet spot. I want to know where she stores her secrets, how quickly they spread.

“A part of me doesn’t want you to get better,” whispers Harm when she realizes our time is up.

On the walk to my car an old man asks me where I got this smile and if I have one to spare.

*

Then I bring clothespins and place them all over her body. She gasps when I remove them. A soft moan escapes her mouth, her hips press hard against me. I sit on her face and she sucks my clit. I squirt for the first time, then I cry quietly in the corner so she can’t see my tears.

“Is this made of real gold?” I ask.

“That’s a vacuum cleaner,” she says.  She still won’t let me kiss her.

*

Our appointment goes over the hour timeslot. When I come, Harm makes me call her by the wrong name. T-Rex, I whisper-scream into her ear. She smells like lemon and lavender and she makes me wetter than I like to admit. I leave before she can take it all back.

*

“Seriously, I came out fine,” I find myself saying. It’s Wednesday. I’ve already walked her around for a good twenty minutes.

“I just feel bad for Blair. She can’t find a guy who wants to stay long enough to even find out what’s wrong with her. It’s a serious three-date curse,” I say.

“Tell me more about your mother,” says Harm, adjusting her glasses.

I’ve been listening to her Top 25 Most Played playlist at night. I turn it on after Mel and I fuck. Last night Mel said, “I knew you were sad, but I didn’t know you were also afraid.”

“There was the time my mom refused to take a picture of Blair and me because we had our hair in messy buns and no make-up on. I guess the picture was important because she was sending it to our entire extended family. She sent us upstairs to fix ourselves. You’d have thought we’d burnt the house down,” I say, sweating on the edge of my seat.

“I grew up above a bar. No one cared what I looked like as long as I could shoot a decent break,” says Harm.

“I wish I’d been there,” I say. Harm gnaws on the inside of her cheek and studies the carpet. Her hands are wrestling snakes in her lap.

When I go to kiss her, she gives me her cheek. I kiss her crow’s feet instead, her skin eerily cold against my lips.

“We shouldn’t,” she says, biting my shoulder. Tingles everywhere. I can’t tell if she could be anyone, or everyone.

*

It’s the first time Harm texts me about something other than appointment time. I’m at the gay bar with Mel and her Tinder date. There are blown-up flamingos everywhere and I name them all Clinton. I’m bored by how unremarkable everyone is, especially me.

“Are you alone?” asks Harm.

“I’m at the bar. Since when do you text me?”

“What bar?”

“I’d like it if you came with me some time,” I type. 

“Go outside.”

I excuse myself then push through the crowd, tripping over my stupid feet.

“Outside,” I reply, embarrassed by my submission.

I answer her call on the first ring, and on the other end is Harm’s tempered breathing as she touches herself to climax. It’s almost too much for me to bear. I clutch onto the light post and try to ignore the two women making out next to me. When Harm’s done, she hangs up and I smile, convinced that I’m the one with all the power.

My text to Drive: “Is it okay to love someone if you don’t love yourself?” Her response: “No offense but I didn’t know you knew that word.”

*

“Let’s talk about Mel,” says Harm, clearly enjoying this topic.

“Let’s not,” I say. “What about the other night?”

“Why do you sleep with someone you so clearly don’t care about?” she presses. “Isn’t it obvious?” I ask, cradling Mercury.

*

Harm pushes up my shirt and kisses my stomach. She says, “Relax your body, relax your body,” but I can’t. The weight of the room is holding me shut.

*

“What if she died? Think about it,” says Harm, nibbling on the end of her pen. She’s an awful therapist. I’m never sure if she has actual feelings or if she simply feels bad for people with her brain.

I gaze at the bird collage on the wall above her head. A blue jay and crow look like they’re about to fight.

“What kind of bird are you?” I ask, knowing that she won’t tell me.

“A crow,” she says, without missing a beat. “And your mother?”

“A hawk,” I say. When she doesn’t react, I make a big production out of soaring around the office. I perch on the arm of her chair. She writes something down in scratchy handwriting I can’t make out, then bites down on my shoulder.

“You’re right,” I nod, returning to my seat. “Of course, I think about my mother dying. More than once a day. But every time I imagine receiving that fated phone call, my reaction is always the same—finally.”

Harm nods then uncrosses and re-crosses her legs. I can’t figure out what it is I want from her, except for her tireless devotion.

*

“Happy hour starts soon,” I say, raising my eyebrows. 

“You know we can’t take this outside of the office,” says Harm, but she smiles when she says it like we’re already up and leaving.

“I could lose my license if someone finds out,” she says. I stare at her with what I hope is intensity mixed with desire.

“What am I saying, you probably tell Drive everything,” she says, shifting around in her chair.

“She doesn’t even know I see you,” I say, sucking on the inside of my cheeks.

My face is bloated from sushi and beer. I regret the sushi.

I do tell Drive everything, but that’s not the point. Drive reads books about animals and tells me about them. She says that octopuses have some approximation of little brains in each tentacle.

“Can you imagine the multi-tasking abilities?” asks Drive, fascinated.

I want to share this fact with Harm—that if I were an octopus, it would be considered impressive that I can simultaneously push her away and pull her closer, and both would be correct.

*

Date night with Harm is on Thursday. She has so much money that she actually buys things at the farmer’s market every week instead of hoarding all the free samples. She brings me a bottle of mead made from honey. We drink it on the curb outside the cocktail bar. I imagine ripping her green dress off of her. When I put my hand on her thigh, she laughs maniacally as if I’ve just suggested that I’m going to become a licensed therapist, too. It throws me off. If anyone is going to laugh maniacally, it’s going to be me.

I run my hand through my hair a few times and find a piece of paper in it, a note from Harm. It says, “This is one of those things I swore I’d never do.” Harm makes a habit out of stashing notes all over my body. When I get home, I find them in my pants pocket, my hat, my coat pocket, my shoe, even my bra. Sometimes they’re sweet, sometimes they’re witty, sometimes they’re dire, they’re always mine. She’s like a magician. I never catch her in the act, though. I think I may be too in love with her to breathe.

“When I was in 3rd grade, we had one of those anti-drug programs come to the school. I remember sitting with my friends at lunch talking about how disgusting cigarettes were and that I’d never ever smoke one. Not for as long as I’d live. We made some kind of stupid pact. A year later, I was smoking in Dave the Snake’s backyard,” I say.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, fingering the spot on her neck where I want her collar to sit.

She doesn’t tell me that she doesn’t want to be mine, she simply talks about the space between wanting something and getting that thing and how untraversable it feels most days. Maybe one day we will figure this out, maybe one day she will crawl inside my bubble without popping it, maybe one day the rain will shine and the sun will fall and we will be beautiful out.

Harm puts her head on my shoulder and passes me the bottle, wrapping her arm around my midsection. I drink quietly, focusing on sucking my stomach in, then, on plucking the thick black hair from the inside of my thigh. Using my bare hands makes me feel alive.

“I can feel your ribs,” she whispers.

I close my eyes and wish a tragedy would strike us. An earthquake splitting the sidewalk open. Perhaps a plane crashing into the bar. Something to distract her.

“No, you can’t,” I say.

“I’m off the clock, anyway,” says Harm, finding my hand and squeezing it.

I remember the day we found out our other mom wasn’t coming home. I was ten and Blair was twelve. We were in her bedroom choreographing a dance that mostly consisted of cartwheels and booty shakes. Blair wouldn’t stop talking, I think to drown out the grumbling of her stomach.

“Are my ribs showing?” she asked, lifting up her baggy t-shirt. She twirled like someone modeling a dress. I thought that she didn’t look very skinny and then I immediately scolded myself for thinking that.

When I nodded yes, she smiled, then said, “I wish I was flexible enough to fold in half and take a bite out of them. I bet they’d be fatty. You know?”

“You know?” she said again when I didn’t respond, her voice higher the second time. 

I nodded. I did know. And I wondered how long it would take for her to discover drugs. By then, I was already smoking weed with Ann down the street and stealing vodka from her parents. Drugs were good to me. I hoped they’d be good to Blair, too. I could be mean but I was never cruel.

That was when our mom barged into Blair’s room. She was the thinnest she’d ever been and she looked fifteen years older than she was. The skin of her jowls hung loosely from her face like some sort of wounded animal. We screamed at her to respect our privacy. She blinked in slow motion then handed us our first note. She could have been mistaken for a dead person.

*

Inside the dimly-lit bar, the people are floating like balloons touching the ceiling. Faces dip closely together, hands reach for each other, lips curl and pout and break into smiles. They remind me of extras in a film. “Pretend you’re having a good time,” the director had said, and they went for it, they really went for it. I hate them. I hate them for their lightness. I hate them for the weight inside of me and for the heavy prayer of Harm’s eyes as they search for someone she might know. It is a curious thing, to tell yourself you’re drowning when you’re the one holding your head underwater.

We decide to try every cocktail twice and wind up closing the bar down. The space between us is closing and it’s not unlike being crushed to death by a boulder and liking it. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted her before. Outside, we’re all over each other, but still, her eyes are vigilant. I haven’t gotten the nerve to try to kiss her again. The problem is, I want to know that she’s mine, but I also want confirmation that I’d have no idea what to do with her once I made her mine.

My stomach has been growling all night, but this time it threatens me: no more fucking around. Harm swallows hard, trying not to put on her therapist voice. I wonder, how far must you shrink before you can begin anew again? As a large, round ball of light that shines all over everyone and everything.

“Well, we can’t go back to my place,” I say, not crazy about the idea of having to sneak her past Mel. Plus, I don’t want her to see the brown spot on the lawn where I pee in the morning.

“But I could meet Mel,” she teases, shoving me.

“We could run away together,” I say. “Fuck this place. Seriously, it’s too stuffy, don’t you think? Even the stray cats can hardly breathe.”

She laughs a strained laugh, then takes out her phone and texts someone; I want to know who is so important, but I don’t dare ask. We stand like that, her typing away on her phone, and me huffing and puffing, trying to stay firmly rooted inside my body.

“Listen, I can just get a new therapist if this is too hard for you. I’m sure there are some other sexy ones out there,” I joke, but it feels like I’m losing her.

“The damage has already been done,” she says, shoving her phone into her purse. It is the verbal equivalent of her prying my cold dead hands from her waist.

“So? What are you trying to say?”

“My,” she says, followed by an over-dramatic cough.

“Your, what?”

Harm doesn’t respond right away. She keeps her fist over her mouth and bites down hard on her knuckles. I feel outside of myself. The sky is falling every which way.

“Harm. What the fuck is it? What are you so afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything, okay?”

It thrills me that she looks like she’s going to cry any second.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” she says, shaking her head.

“Don’t do that,” I say, putting my arms around her waist. She pushes me away, her hands burning my chest. I’m so heavy I could fall through to the center of the earth.

“My wife’s at my place. That’s why we can’t go there,” she whispers, side-eyeing the straight couple passing us, hand in hand, stupid smiles on their faces.

“That’s a joke, right?” I say, my face going numb, my lungs freezing in my chest. I imagine Harm tied to the bed and getting fucked by a hot, muscled butch. Her muscles straining beneath her skin.

She’s so beautiful, I have to look away. When I look back all I see is a world that isn’t mine to keep.

“Harm,” I say.

“Yeah,” she breathes.

“Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?” I say, grabbing her hand. She lets me keep her hand and somehow, it is worse that way.

“You never asked,” she says, pretending to be interested in whatever’s in the dismantled sky. “And I knew you wouldn’t want to share me.”

“Harm.”

If someone were watching us through a telescope, they would see two faces cycling through every possible emotion like someone dealing a deck of cards. Sorrow for you, anger for you. Fear for you, confusion for you. They would see two women shrinking simultaneously, but hardly together. They would see a lot of things that the women can’t see.

She stumbles, leaning against me for support. I once knew someone who was addicted to that computer game, Second Life—so much so that he neglected his first life. This feels like that, only I don’t know if I’m her first or her second life.

“I can’t do this, I’m sorry. I thought I could blow up my life and see if you’d still be standing there afterward, but I can’t, I can’t, I already chose my life.”

A year from now, we will wake up in separate beds, in separate lives, and we will each pack for a separate trip. Neither of us will know exactly where we are going, just that we are going. We will scrub our separate bodies, our separate hair, our separate sinks. We will each be under the impression that we are on the brink of something transformative, that we only belong to our lives to the extent that when we frown, our reflections frown back. We will think about what went wrong and then we will lean into that wrongness, our feet cold and tired from running through all the timelines of our lives.

But right now, I want to kiss her fiery red lips, so I do, and her mouth tastes like cinnamon and bourbon and lemon and mint and power and for a moment, we are married—nothing else matters except for her tongue, her hunger, and the wedding bells ringing inside my chest. I don’t bother denying myself my desires. Nothing good has ever come from holding back. I think of all the things my mother hasn’t said in the past twenty years. Where did those words go? Did they dissolve into the sad breath of regret? Are they still alive? Certainly, her words must exist somewhere. In someone else’s mouth. Doing someone else things. Tell them hi for me if you ever meet them. You’ll know them by the way they dig into your fat and call you home.

Marisa Crane is a queer, nonbinary writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly Review, Catapult, The Florida Review, F(r)iction, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A graduate of Tin House's 2020 Winter & Summer Workshops, she is the author of the poetry chapbook, Our Debatable Bodies (Animal Heart Press 2019), and she serves as a prose reader for The Adroit Journal. Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in San Diego with her wife and baby.