Metamorphoses
I.
If you want to do damage, you can do it in Target. You can build a small grave for yourself out of five to six items and you can lie in it and die. There are places here that will ruin you. Winding through the store, I slip into my basket whatever I can muster a use for. I did not bring a list because I am trying for authentic spontaneity. I authentically and spontaneously grab the following:
yellow headband
bottle of windex
tub of vaseline
one-shouldered sports bra
I go alone to Target as Orpheus goes alone to the underworld, looking for an object to replace his grief. He knows as well as I do the trickery of artificially lit realms. I grope for fabrics that will flatter my body, for a thin, salty cracker with the right cheese flavoring.
Then nail stickers; how do they work? An hour or a month later I pick out a bathing suit. It is not even my size, but what are consequences in the face of excess? In the face of bright white tiles? Of hair ties? Tie me up and I can live here, in the underworld. I could have everything I want! The fantasy crawls around in my head:
I am on a date in a park. I sit criss-cross-apple-sauce on a checkered blanket and my knees do not even hurt. Dappled light indicates romance. We might kiss. He might love me forever. In this fantasy I own a woven picnic basket. Everything I purchased at Target had led me to this moment, has made me the Best Girl. I say to myself, You are the Best Girl. I covertly thank my yellow headband, my pink eyeshadow, my virginal dress with an open back. The man does not notice, he is too taken with me—
What an ambient loneliness Orpheus must have endured. I endure too, as I proceed through self-checkout at Target. As I scan my items, I am triumphant. I have moved Hades with my song, so he permits me to leave with my illusions. I emerge into life, into the waning sunlight. But I am not sure my illusions have followed me out the door. I am not sure I have followed myself out the door. I look behind me.
II.
The thing to do to be a writer is to chip away at your craft. But I do not like to chip. I’d like a jackhammer, and I’d like to make it quick, please. I do not have the patience for any of this today. I have only tuna salad in the fridge, the consistency of puke. I have no consistency. I have only two eggs. They are white and organic. I have so much to buy. I am sunburnt and full of fries because I spent the day at the pool and did not reapply sunscreen. I’m out of butter. I’m out of cold brew. I’m out of lotion, of shampoo, of clean clothes, of time.
Yesterday I got rejected from a writing residency. I just want to reside somewhere. Even for a day, even for an hour! What’s so prestigious about sleeping in a cot somewhere in New England? These days my writing drifts out ahead of me, just past arm’s reach. I am beginning to feel like an amnesiac. I keep forgetting whether or not I will amount to anything.
My future will be luminous or drowned, but this worry recedes in favor of the material now. I need an ice cube tray for my new apartment. I head to Target with my roommate, Maslen. We begin in high spirits. But arriving in Downtown Brooklyn we sour, because going to Target for business is a crueler game. Inside, the store is hot and crowded. Targets in cities are always worse, less generous. Maslen and I both develop raging headaches, skull-deep. Then we spend eight hours or five minutes ravaging half-empty rows looking for an ice cube tray. I want a treat to take home with me, but nothing catches my eye. I feel hot, suddenly. No, this isn’t what I had hoped. I had hoped to perch on the brink as I strolled down aisles, had hoped to find a bottle of nail polish that would save me, bring me back to my place in the park with the boy who wants me forever, who brings me to my knees with longing, facilitates the perfect orgasm, the Longest and Best one, and he is the one giving it to me, in the same spot where we had our first picnic, while I’m wearing the virginal dress, and he is hitching it up, and I am ceding control, and it would be thanks to this $8 investment in myself (“Midnight Cami” by Essie), which I replenish with every stroke of the precision brush on my pinky finger. But no. This is not the underworld, where I am held by the spirits of women who also tried and liked the retinol product I am buying. This is a void worse than hell. We chase an employee down to get his attention. He is cute and I feel nothing. He says all the stock is probably stuck somewhere on a crate in the sea, milling about as the supply chain peters to a halt. I lied—he only mentioned the supply chain. But the crate in the sea felt implied.
III.
God, I am out of tampons. I am back at Target. I am leaking blood. I am reeking of delusion, though at first it smelled of optimism. I am creaking like I’m eighty, my joints keep popping, I am peaking right now, I am twenty-five. I am treating you to coffee. I am bleating out your praise. Out please, I’m trying to write. I lied—not writing, shopping. I’m in line to pay. There are Bonus Points for Target Rewards members today. I’m buying stain remover. Out, damned spot! Spot the fool. Fool me once and I’ll cry. Fool me twice and I’ll cry. I am leaking tears. I am a leap of faith. This was a leap of faith. Orpheus was supposed to keep the faith, but it ended in a faithless blunder. Target sells Impossible Meat now. Beef burgers are bad for uterine health or perhaps good for uterine health because they have iron. Have faith in the process. Have processed in your meats. Go vegetarian. Give up being vegetarian. Give up, vegetarian! Now I’ve lost my credo. Now I’m lost in the Family Planning aisle. This is where Eurydice waits for Orpheus, but he can’t come, and I can’t come, Lexapro killed my libido. In the Home Goods aisle, Orpheus is buying candles, throw pillows, starting a new life, seeking a new wife, gotta move on, he says, found a good deal on a condo in Downtown Brooklyn, maybe I’ll even get on Hinge. While here in the Family Planning aisle, Eurydice is buying tampons, and so am I, and now we’re paying, and as we’re paying the guy at the cash register says are you paying together? and I say no and Eurydice says yes and I say, Oh, I guess we are paying together, I guess I’ve been left down here too, and he says, I hope you found everything you needed, and we don’t know how to say that we didn’t, but no worries we will come back, we will always come back, we will always be grateful for the tampons, for the eye cream, for the man in the Home Goods aisle who is cursing our name, who is loving us too much, who is looking for us on the shelf.
Sabrina Bustamante (@sabustamante711) is a writer based out of Iowa City, where she is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa. Her work appears in Latina Magazine, Bending Genres, and the Dillydoun Review.