First, do anything but be alone. Date lots of people you will remember by comparing them to various vegetables you have seen in the produce section in the grocery store.
Date a girl with blonde hair whose head reminds you of a clove of garlic. She is soft and kind and seems like she knows what she is doing. Review conversations the two of you had like studying lecture notes. When she asks if you love her, answer only with a smile.
Next, try dating a man who is divorced with two children. He is emotionally unavailable and is exactly what you are looking for. His body reminds you of a curved russet potato. Start to slowly fall in love with him. Laugh at jokes you don’t understand and nod to references you’ve never heard of. Jump on trampolines with his children. Wake up too early. Meet his mother in chain restaurants. She orders too many lemons in her water and doesn’t say what she is thinking. Eat french fries and garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette at restaurants you’ve never been to. Years pass by like minutes. Get into wild arguments with the russet potato. Ask: “Who is she? Who is that woman?” Begin to feel alive. His lies taste like warm milk. He says: “There’s no one else.” Leave him.
Next, try dating a man who seems to have it all together. He is someone you and your high school friends would have called “The Perfect Catch.” He is starting to lose hair around the side of his head which makes the rest of his hair stick up on top. He reminds you of a red onion sliced down the middle. He wants to know about your favorite book, most embarrassing experience, the things you worry about at night before bed, and especially your ring size.
The Perfect Catch wants you to meet his mother. He wants you to meet his nephew and his niece. They will run to him, yelling his name, throwing their arms wildly around him. He will look to you and smile as if to say “Look at this, look at these small humans.” Start, slowly, to run from him.
When you finally sleep with someone else, it will be almost an accident. He will look exactly like The Perfect Catch except he will have hair red as a ripe tomato. His red hair will be so bright that you are drawn to it like a light near the road while driving home in the dark. You can tell him it meant nothing, that he meant nothing, but The Perfect Catch has already forgotten your ring size and is swimming away from you now, free into the open sea.
Start to be alone again. Count the weeks since your heart was broken. Write stories in the middle of the night, under cover of your duvet, sweating, almost convulsing. Go to sleep early or not at all. Take up cooking. Make The Perfect Catch smoked salmon with risotto and leave it on his doorstep as a peace offering. Feel relieved when he doesn’t call you back.
Write a story about a woman being swallowed whole by her boyfriend and counting the days she spends inside his stomach using the pieces of lettuce from his lunch. Paint your nails bright red. Stare at the stomach of three pregnant women in the waiting room of your gynecologist’s office and name their children: Zion, Maddox, Charlotte. Eat only avocados for a week. Go to a pop culture trivia night and know none of the answers. Drink lagers. Kiss a man at trivia night and never speak to him again. Quit your job. Smoke cigarettes. Eat meals in your car.
Collect men like keychains or just collect keychains. Have wild sex or none at all. Stare at your fingernails. Toenails. Use only sea salt. Put post-it notes on everything. Download dating apps only to find every single one of your ex’s on them. Their bios will say, “Looking for something simple and fun” or maybe, “Looking for the one.” Delete the apps.
Write another story about a woman whose husband hates bananas and is having an affair. She begins to cook meals with only bananas: banana pancakes, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, banana pasta, frozen chocolate bananas for dessert. Imagine your life with hundreds of different men and love none of them. Keep buying Vaseline for your chapped lips and cardboard tampons as if you aren’t doing any of these things. Months pass by like seconds. Go for walks in the park with strangers. Stay at an airbnb to know what it feels like to be heartbroken in a different apartment.
Become a poet. Write things like:
Crouton
i stab the last crouton in my salad
three, four times
and then get angry when it crumbles into tiny
pieces.
so I guess what I’m saying is,
don’t keep trying things you know
won’t work.
Wonder if being alone is good or terrible for your writing. Keep a reporter notebook full of things people have said, done, looked like. It is full of vegetables. You know this is good for your writing. Make a list of all the people you have slept with. For some, you can only remember the first letter of their name. Try to make an acronym. It says: DKZCAKKJSJRKSTDE. “What would a poet do?” you ask yourself.
Take up running. Run farther than you drive everyday and spend every evening icing your shins and watching Teen Mom. Stop drinking coffee because it makes you poop immediately. Find old gift cards in your childhood dresser and re-gift them as graduation presents to people you will not speak to in a few months. When the gift-receivers discover there is only $2.67 on their Starbucks or Subway gift cards, act surprised, shocked, horrified. You can’t trust anyone these days.
Meet your mother for dinner and don’t fight her when she offers to pay for the bill. She never eats before three in the afternoon and doesn’t cut her hair. Her head is long and narrow like a baby cucumber. The waitress comes back and your mother asks for extra lemons in her water. She wants to make sure you are spending time doing good things, doing the right things. She asks you to assure her, to tell her that you are fine. Hesitate at first. Think of you running, your fingernails, your avocados, and answer only with a smile.
Danielle Epting has published fiction and nonfiction work in various journals such as Nailed Magazine, Thought Catalog, Elephant Journal, etc. Her first collection of short stories will be published in the Spring of 2021. She is a graduate of the MA program at the University at Albany. When she’s not writing, she can be found running or hanging out with her pup.
