BAILEY PITTENGER
Luxury, II
While I’m making grief scones, my friend A messages me privately to ask me if I will provide
a reading of her dream. As she continues typing her narrative, I interrupt her by writing in
short bursts about how I invented a new type of mint in my dream. She stops her narrative
to tell me that she fell asleep to the sound of one of her cats yowling in heat. I add that I fell
asleep to the sound of a chainsaw. In my dream, I was in a loft adjacent to my ex-lover’s old
apartment. I felt vengeful for being so close to a place that could have made me feel
melancholic and weary: conflict. All of a sudden, I hear something that sounds like shaving
cream being sprayed onto a throw pillow. The new lover I’m with says, Eat it. And so I eat it
and as I consider the flavor of what tastes like the inside of a mouth, the new lover tells me
that it’s a new product of foam mint. He sprays some directly into his mouth and offers me
more. We sit on the couch eating foam mint, which just tastes like mouth, so I decide that
this is our way of making out; I get so tired. When A sends me her dream, I read about her
being turned into a sex doll. The sex doll version of herself takes the real version of herself
and folds her into a position that makes her feel like a squatting frog. The sex doll version of
her packs her into the passenger seat of her car, and then drives her to the Salvation Army.
Everything the sex doll buys, she stuffs into A’s vagina, and then drives back to her
apartment. A says that she doesn’t want to describe what happened next, but she woke up
with her cat on her chest begging to be fed. She asks me if I think she dreamed this because
I asked her the day before what she reads as the facial expression of a vagina, but I tell her
that it’s probably because of the sound of her yowling cat, and her fear of immodest female
sexuality. She says I must have dreamed my dream because the sound of a chainsaw
somehow reminds me that the sound of foam exiting a can is how the sound of making out is
narrated.
a reading of her dream. As she continues typing her narrative, I interrupt her by writing in
short bursts about how I invented a new type of mint in my dream. She stops her narrative
to tell me that she fell asleep to the sound of one of her cats yowling in heat. I add that I fell
asleep to the sound of a chainsaw. In my dream, I was in a loft adjacent to my ex-lover’s old
apartment. I felt vengeful for being so close to a place that could have made me feel
melancholic and weary: conflict. All of a sudden, I hear something that sounds like shaving
cream being sprayed onto a throw pillow. The new lover I’m with says, Eat it. And so I eat it
and as I consider the flavor of what tastes like the inside of a mouth, the new lover tells me
that it’s a new product of foam mint. He sprays some directly into his mouth and offers me
more. We sit on the couch eating foam mint, which just tastes like mouth, so I decide that
this is our way of making out; I get so tired. When A sends me her dream, I read about her
being turned into a sex doll. The sex doll version of herself takes the real version of herself
and folds her into a position that makes her feel like a squatting frog. The sex doll version of
her packs her into the passenger seat of her car, and then drives her to the Salvation Army.
Everything the sex doll buys, she stuffs into A’s vagina, and then drives back to her
apartment. A says that she doesn’t want to describe what happened next, but she woke up
with her cat on her chest begging to be fed. She asks me if I think she dreamed this because
I asked her the day before what she reads as the facial expression of a vagina, but I tell her
that it’s probably because of the sound of her yowling cat, and her fear of immodest female
sexuality. She says I must have dreamed my dream because the sound of a chainsaw
somehow reminds me that the sound of foam exiting a can is how the sound of making out is
narrated.
When Men are Sad
I’m flipping through the pages of The Wonderful World of Bulbs. I’m a fortuneteller of the near
future when I’m wearing my big pink bathrobe. Somewhere, a man is sad because he wants
to be today’s Humboldt, but he can’t find anything new to discover. He really wants to be
Wittgenstein, Goethe, and Bernhard. He’s always weeping alone in his apartment, which he
refers to as his brood chamber to his closest friends. Poor man. Somewhere, a collective of
women stretch and yawn. I think I know that all of their boobs are swollen because of the
supermoon, so I decide that I’ve discovered that I’ll call the boob tide. A clear image of it
appears in my mind, so I think I’ll commission a landscape painter. A woman, of course. I
flip through The Wonderful Life of Bulbs regardless of my bulbless garden. I don’t have a
garden, but I do have a brood chamber, which is a term male scientists use to describe the shell
that protects the eggs of a female argonaut. I sometimes call it a bra, but I can see how it
might also be wonderful like a bulb. The man in his brood chamber has such a sad fortune. He
discovers what he thinks is suffering. Has he ever visited Wisconsin? Neither have I, but I
once dreamed that I was there following my mother in a huge blizzard. I checked all three of
the weather apps on my phone to confirm that it would be 95 degrees the next day. You make
me suffer for keeping me waiting, a man screams somewhere in the near future. As I follow my
mother, I brush away spiderwebs covered in dust and snow. The strings of the webs crunch
as they break against the back of my hand. You’re so aggressive, a man somewhere will think
of me in the near future. My mother uses a comb to comb the spiderwebs, gently as if the
webs grow from the head of a child. I’m being followed by a large spider, who eventually
bites me on my right hand. Hate me for the power I have to knock you up, the sad man
writes about me in his poetry. He thinks he can be a Humboldt with literature about his
body. When I’m bitten, I feel more sadness than pain; I rarely, if ever, feel hate. I stay on the
phone with 911 dispatch for a long, long time as my hand swells. There’s no music when I’m
on hold. It’s been a long time, a lot of time passes. I ask time if the slowness is deliberate,
but time tells me that I’ll have to wait for an answer to my question. Snow blows. We drive
away and a man merges in front of us so closely that I can read the labels on the building
materials protruding from the bed of his pickup truck. Glacier white, reads the label on a pile
of pipes that should, from what I know of the law, have a red flag tied to the end because
they protrude from the truck. But maybe he did not intend for the pipes to protrude so far. In
the near future, the man will stick the pipes into the frozen Wisconsin ground and see what
he finds or feels. My mother hands me a granola bar for energy. It’s mostly almonds and I
suddenly feel emotional as I chew, either because of the supermoon or because almonds
remind me of amygdalas. We can barely see the road and we’ve run out of windshield wiper
fluid. Chewing amygdalas uses up all of my energy. I have to quit writing, I tell my mother. Try
reading this book about bulbs, she suggests, You’ll perfect your metaphors. Are you sober now, I ask. I
won’t wait for the answer and I wake up, put on my big pink bathrobe, and proceed to think
of fortunes of the past and future.
future when I’m wearing my big pink bathrobe. Somewhere, a man is sad because he wants
to be today’s Humboldt, but he can’t find anything new to discover. He really wants to be
Wittgenstein, Goethe, and Bernhard. He’s always weeping alone in his apartment, which he
refers to as his brood chamber to his closest friends. Poor man. Somewhere, a collective of
women stretch and yawn. I think I know that all of their boobs are swollen because of the
supermoon, so I decide that I’ve discovered that I’ll call the boob tide. A clear image of it
appears in my mind, so I think I’ll commission a landscape painter. A woman, of course. I
flip through The Wonderful Life of Bulbs regardless of my bulbless garden. I don’t have a
garden, but I do have a brood chamber, which is a term male scientists use to describe the shell
that protects the eggs of a female argonaut. I sometimes call it a bra, but I can see how it
might also be wonderful like a bulb. The man in his brood chamber has such a sad fortune. He
discovers what he thinks is suffering. Has he ever visited Wisconsin? Neither have I, but I
once dreamed that I was there following my mother in a huge blizzard. I checked all three of
the weather apps on my phone to confirm that it would be 95 degrees the next day. You make
me suffer for keeping me waiting, a man screams somewhere in the near future. As I follow my
mother, I brush away spiderwebs covered in dust and snow. The strings of the webs crunch
as they break against the back of my hand. You’re so aggressive, a man somewhere will think
of me in the near future. My mother uses a comb to comb the spiderwebs, gently as if the
webs grow from the head of a child. I’m being followed by a large spider, who eventually
bites me on my right hand. Hate me for the power I have to knock you up, the sad man
writes about me in his poetry. He thinks he can be a Humboldt with literature about his
body. When I’m bitten, I feel more sadness than pain; I rarely, if ever, feel hate. I stay on the
phone with 911 dispatch for a long, long time as my hand swells. There’s no music when I’m
on hold. It’s been a long time, a lot of time passes. I ask time if the slowness is deliberate,
but time tells me that I’ll have to wait for an answer to my question. Snow blows. We drive
away and a man merges in front of us so closely that I can read the labels on the building
materials protruding from the bed of his pickup truck. Glacier white, reads the label on a pile
of pipes that should, from what I know of the law, have a red flag tied to the end because
they protrude from the truck. But maybe he did not intend for the pipes to protrude so far. In
the near future, the man will stick the pipes into the frozen Wisconsin ground and see what
he finds or feels. My mother hands me a granola bar for energy. It’s mostly almonds and I
suddenly feel emotional as I chew, either because of the supermoon or because almonds
remind me of amygdalas. We can barely see the road and we’ve run out of windshield wiper
fluid. Chewing amygdalas uses up all of my energy. I have to quit writing, I tell my mother. Try
reading this book about bulbs, she suggests, You’ll perfect your metaphors. Are you sober now, I ask. I
won’t wait for the answer and I wake up, put on my big pink bathrobe, and proceed to think
of fortunes of the past and future.
BAILEY MESTAYER PITTENGER lives most of her life between Appalachia and Deep South. She has an MA in English from Wake Forest University and an MFA in prose from the University of Notre Dame. Her work can be found in Denver Quarterly, Gigantic Sequins, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Denver.