Turtles All the Way Down

  "Like what?" I asked. It was so much easier to talk to him in the dark, looking at the same sky instead of at each other. It felt like we didn't have bodies, like we were just voices talking.

  "If I ever write something I'm proud of, I'll let you read it."

  "I like bad poetry," I said.

  "Please don't make me share my dumb poems with you. Reading someone's poetry is like seeing them naked."

  "So I'm basically saying I want to see you naked," I said.

  "They're just stupid little things."

  "I want to hear one."

  "Okay, like, last year I wrote one called 'Last Ducks of Autumn.'"

  "And it goes . . ."

  "The leaves are gone you should be, too I'd be gone if I were you but then again, here I am walking alone / in the frigid dawn."

  "I quite like that," I said.

  "I like short poems with weird rhyme schemes, because that's what life is like."

  "That's what life is like?" I was trying to get his meaning.

  "Yeah. It rhymes, but not in the way you expect."

  I looked over at him. I suddenly wanted Davis badly enough that I no longer cared why I wanted him, whether what wanted him was capitalized or lowercase. I reached over, touched his cold cheek with my cold hand, and began to kiss him.

  When we came up for air, I felt his hands on my waist, and he said, "I, uh, wow."

  I smirked at him. I liked feeling his body against mine, one of his hands tracing my spine. "Got any other poems?"

  "I've been trying to write just couplets lately. Like, nature stuff. Like, 'the daffodil knows more of spring / than roses know of anything.'"

  "Yup, that works, too," I said, and kissed him again. I felt my chest tighten, his cold lips and warm mouth, his hands pulling me closer to him through the layers of our coats.

  I liked making out with so many layers on. Our breathing steamed up his glasses as we kissed, and he tried to take them off, but I pressed them up the bridge of his nose, and we were laughing together, and then he started kissing my neck, and a thought occurred to me: His tongue had been in my mouth.

  I told myself to be in this moment, to let myself feel his warmth on my skin, but now his tongue was on my neck, wet and alive and microbial, and his hand was sneaking under my jacket, his cold fingers against my bare skin. It's fine you're fine just kiss him you need to check something it's fine just be fucking normal check to see if his microbes stay in you billions of people kiss and don't die just make sure his microbes aren't going to permanently colonize you come on please stop this he could have campylobacter he could be a nonsymptomatic E. coli carrier get that and you'll need antibiotics and then you'll get C. diff and boom dead in four days please fucking stop just kiss him JUST CHECK TO MAKE SURE.

  I pulled away.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  I nodded. "I just, just need a little air." I sat up, turned away from him, pulled out my phone, and searched, "do bacteria of people you kiss stay inside your body," and quickly scrolled through a couple pseudoscience results before getting to the one actual study done on the subject. Around eighty million microbes are exchanged on average per kiss, and "after six-month follow-up, human gut microbiomes appear to be modestly but consistently altered."

  His bacteria would be in me forever, eighty million of them, breeding and growing and joining my bacteria and producing God knows what.

  I felt his hand on my shoulder. I spun around and squirmed away from him. My breath running away from me. Dots in my vision. You're fine he's not even the first boy you've kissed eighty million organisms in me forever calm down permanently altering the microbiome this is not rational you need to do something please there is a fix here please get to a bathroom. "What's wrong?"

  "Uh, nothing," I said. "I, um, just need to use the restroom."

  I pulled my phone back out to reread the study but resisted the urge, clicked it shut and slid it back into my pocket. But no, I had to check to see if it had said modestly altered or moderately altered. I pulled out my phone again, and brought up the study. Modestly. Okay. Modestly is better than moderately. But consistently. Shit.

  I felt nauseated and disgusting, but also pathetic; I knew how I looked to him. I knew that my crazy was no longer a quirk, a simple matter of a cracked finger pad. Now, it was an irritation, like it was to Daisy, like it was to anyone who got close to me.

  I was cold, but started to sweat anyway. I zipped my jacket up to my chin as I walked toward the house. I didn't want to run, but every second counted. Needed to get to a bathroom. Davis opened the back door for me and pointed me down a hallway toward a guest bathroom. I closed the door and locked it, shutting myself inside, and leaned against the countertop. I unzipped my jacket and stared at myself in the mirror. I took off the Band-Aid, opened up the cut with my thumbnail, then washed my hands and put on a new Band-Aid. I looked in the drawers beneath the sink for some mouthwash, but they didn't have any, so in the end, I just swished cold water around in my mouth and spit it out.

  There, are we good? I asked myself, and I responded, One more time to make sure, and so I swished and gargled more water, spit it out. I patted my sweaty face dry with some toilet paper and walked back into the golden light of Davis's mansion.

  He motioned for me to sit down, and put his arm around me. I didn't want his microbiota near me, but I let him keep his arm there, because I didn't want to seem like a freak. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. Just, like, a little panicky."

  "Was it something that I did? Should I do--"

  "No, it's not about you."

  "You can tell me."

  "It's really not. I . . . just, kissing freaked me out a little, I guess."

  "Okay, so no kissing yet. That's no problem."

  "It will be," I said. "I have these . . . thought spirals, and I can't get out of them."

  "Turning and turning in the tightening gyre," he said.

  "I'm . . . this, like . . . this doesn't get better. You should know that."

  "I'm not in a rush."

  I leaned forward, looking at the hardwood floor. "I'm not gonna un-have this is what I mean. I've had it since I can remember and it's not getting better and I can't have a normal life if I can't kiss someone without freaking out."

  "It's okay, Aza. Really."

  "You might think that now, but you won't think that forever."

  "But it's not forever," he said. "It's now. Can I get you anything? Glass of water or something?"

  "Can we . . . can we just watch a movie or something?"

  "Yes," he said. "Absolutely." He offered me his hand, but I got up on my own. As we walked toward the basement steps, Davis said, "Here at the Pickett residence, we have both kinds of movies--Star Wars and Star Trek. What would you prefer?"

  "I'm not really a fan of space movies," I said.

  "Great, then we'll watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, forty percent of which is set right here on earth." I looked up at him and smiled, but I could not cinch the lasso on my thoughts, which were galloping all around my brain.

  --

  We walked down to the basement, where I tapped the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel to make the bookcase open. I sat down in one of the overstuffed leather recliners, grateful for the armrests between the seats. Davis appeared after a while with a Dr Pepper, placed it in the cup holder by my armrest, and sat down next to me. "How do you manage to be best friends with Daisy without liking space operas?"

  "I'll watch them with her; I just don't love them," I said. He's trying to treat you like you're normal and you're trying to respond like you're normal but everyone involved knows you are definitely not normal. Normal people can kiss if they want to kiss. Normal people don't sweat like you. Normal people choose their thoughts like they choose what to watch on TV. Everyone in this conversation knows you're a freak.

  "Have you read her fic?"

  "I read a couple stories when she first started in middle school. They're not really my thing." I could feel the sweat g
lands opening on my upper lip.

  "She's a pretty good writer. You should read them. You're actually kind of in some of them."

  "Yeah, okay," I said quietly, and then at last he pulled out his phone and used an app to start the movie. I pretended to watch while settling all the way into the spiral. I kept thinking about that Pettibon painting, with its multicolored whirlpool, pulling your eye into the center of it. I tried to breathe in the Dr. Singh-sanctioned way without making it too obvious, but within a few minutes I was sweating in earnest, and he definitely noticed, because he'd seen this movie a hundred times, so really he was only watching it to watch me watch it, and I could feel his glances over at me, and even though I had my jacket zipped, he obviously had noticed the mad, wet mustache on my sopping upper lip.

  I could feel the tension in the air, and I knew he was trying to figure out how to make me happy again. His brain was spinning right alongside mine. I couldn't make myself happy, but I could make people around me miserable.

  --

  When the movie ended, I told him I was tired, because that seemed the adjective most likely to get me where I needed to be--alone and in my bed. Davis drove me home, walked me to the door, and kissed me chastely on my sweaty lips. As I stood on my doormat, I waved at him. He backed out of the driveway, and then I went into the garage, opened Harold's trunk, and grabbed my dad's phone, because I felt like looking at his pictures.

  I snuck past Mom, who was asleep on the couch in front of the TV. I found an old wall charger in my desk, plugged in Dad's phone, and sat there for a long time swiping through his photos, scrolling through all the pictures of the sky split open by tree branches.

  "You know we've got those on the computer," Mom said gently from behind me. I hadn't heard her get up.

  "Yeah," I said. I unplugged the phone and shut it off.

  "Were you talking to him?"

  "Kinda," I said.

  "What were you telling him?"

  I smiled. "Secrets."

  "Ah, I tell him secrets, too. He's good at keeping them."

  "The best," I said.

  "Aza, I'm very sorry if I hurt Davis's feelings. And I've written him an apology note as well. I took it too far. But I also need you to understand--" I waved her away.

  "It's fine. Listen, I gotta change." I grabbed clothes and then went to the bathroom, where I undressed, toweled off the sweat, and then let my body cool down in the air, my feet cold against the floor. I untied my hair, then stared at myself in the mirror. I hated my body. It disgusted me--its hair, its pinpricks of sweat, its scrawniness. Skin pulled over a skeleton, an animated corpse. I wanted out--out of my body, out of my thoughts, out--but I was stuck inside of this thing, just like all the bacteria colonizing me.

  Knock on the door. "I'm changing," I said. I removed the Band-Aid, checked it for blood or pus, tossed it in the trash, and then applied hand sanitizer to my finger, the burn of it seeping into the cut.

  I pulled on sweatpants and an old T-shirt of my mom's, and emerged from the bathroom, where Mom was waiting for me.

  "You feeling anxious?" she said askingly.

  "I'm fine," I answered, and turned toward my room.

  I turned out the lights and got into bed. I wasn't tired, exactly, but I wasn't feeling too keen on consciousness, either. When Mom came in, a few minutes later, I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn't have to talk to her. She stood above me, singing this old song she'd sung whenever I couldn't sleep, as far back as I could remember.

  It's a song soldiers in England used to sing to the tune of the New Year's song, "Auld Lang Syne." It goes, "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here." Her pitch rose through the first half like a deep breath in, and then she sang it back down. "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

  Even though I was supposed to be basically grown up and my mother annoyed the hell out of me, I couldn't stop thinking until her lullaby finally put me to sleep.

  THIRTEEN

  DESPITE MY HAVING psychologically decompensated in his presence, Davis texted me the next morning before I even got out of bed.

  Him: Want to watch a movie tonight? Doesn't even have to be set in space.

  Me: I can't. Another time maybe. Sorry I freaked out and for the sweating and everything.

  Him: You don't even sweat an un-normal amount.

  Me: I definitely do but I don't want to talk about it.

  Him: You really don't like your body.

  Me: True.

  Him: I like it. It's a good body.

  I enjoyed being with him more in this nonphysical space, but I also felt the need to board up the windows of my self.

  Me: I feel kinda precarious in general, and I can't really date you. Or date anyone. I'm sorry but I can't. I like you, but I can't date you.

  Him: We agree on that. Too much work. All people in relationships ever do is talk about their relationship status. It's like a Ferris wheel.

  Me: Huh?

  Him: When you're on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who's doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.

  Me: Well, what do you have an interest in?

  Him: You.

  Me: I don't know how to respond to that.

  Him: You don't need to. Have a good day, Aza.

  Me: You too, Davis.

  --

  I had an appointment with Dr. Karen Singh the next day after school. I sat on the love seat across from her and looked up at that picture of a man holding a net. I stared at the picture while we talked because the relentlessness of Dr. Singh's eye contact was a little much for me.

  "How have you been?"

  "Not great."

  "What's going on?" she asked. In my peripheral vision, I could see her legs crossed, black short-heeled shoes, her foot tapping in the air.

  "There's this boy," I said.

  "And?"

  "I don't know. He's cute and smart and I like him, but I'm not getting any better, and I just feel like if this can't make me happy, then what can?"

  "I don't know. What can?"

  I groaned. "That's such a psychiatrist move."

  "Point taken. A change in personal circumstances, even a positive one, can trigger anxiety. So it wouldn't be uncommon to feel anxious as you develop a new relationship. Where are you with the intrusive thoughts?"

  "Well, yesterday I was making out with him and had to stop everything because I couldn't stop thinking about how gross it was, so not great."

  "About how gross what was?"

  "Just how his tongue has its own particular microbiome and once he sticks his tongue in my mouth his bacteria become part of my microbiome for literally the rest of my life. Like, his tongue will sort of always be in my mouth until I'm dead, and then his tongue microbes will eat my corpse."

  "And that made you want to stop kissing him."

  "Well, yeah," I said.

  "That's not uncommon. So part of you wanted to be kissing him and another part of you felt the intense worry that comes with being intimate with someone."

  "Right, but I wasn't worried about intimacy. I was worried about microbial exchange."

  "Well, your worry expressed itself as being about microbial exchange."

  I just groaned at the therapy bullshit. She asked me if I'd taken my Ativan. I told her I hadn't brought it to Davis's house. And then she asked me if I was taking the Lexapro every day, and I was, like, not every day. The conversation devolved into her telling me that medication only works if you take it, and that I had to treat my health problem with consistency and care, and me trying to explain that there is something intensely weird and upsetting about the notion that you can only become yourself by ingesting a medication that changes your self.

  When the conversation paused for a moment, I asked, "Why'd you put up that
picture? Of that guy with the netting?"

  "What aren't you saying? What are you scared to say, Aza?"

  I thought about the real question, the one that remained constantly in the background of my consciousness like a ringing in the ears. I was embarrassed of it, but also I felt like saying it might be dangerous somehow. Like how you don't ever say Voldemort's name. "I think I might be a fiction," I said.

  "How's that?"

  "Like, you say it's stressful to have a change in circumstances, right?"

  She nodded.

  "But what I want to know is, is there a you independent of circumstances? Is there a way-down-deep me who is an actual, real person, the same person if she has money or not, the same person if she has a boyfriend or not, the same if she goes to this school or that school? Or am I only a set of circumstances?"

  "I don't follow how that would make you fictional."

  "I mean, I don't control my thoughts, so they're not really mine. I don't decide if I'm sweating or get cancer or C. diff or whatever, so my body isn't really mine. I don't decide any of that--outside forces do. I'm a story they're telling. I am circumstances."

  She nodded. "Can you apprehend these outside forces?"

  "No, I'm not hallucinating," I said. "It's . . . like, I'm just not sure that I am, strictly speaking, real."

  Dr. Singh placed her feet on the floor and leaned forward, her hands on her knees. "That's very interesting," she said. "Very interesting." I felt briefly proud to be, for a moment anyway, not not uncommon. "It must be very scary, to feel that your self might not be yours. Almost a kind of . . . imprisonment?"

  I nodded.

  "There's a moment," she said, "near the end of Ulysses when the character Molly Bloom appears to speak directly to the author. She says, 'O Jamesy let me up out of this.' You're imprisoned within a self that doesn't feel wholly yours, like Molly Bloom. But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated."

  I nodded.

  "But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't."

  "But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?"

  "No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less."