By Sarah Ledet
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mentions of sex and sexual themes
The weight of Dany’s un-motion felt like a poorly brewed cup of coffee. It sat in her stomach, slightly acidic with no real taste. No taste if you didn’t count the grounds clinging to her tongue from the small hole in her French press plunger. She kept saying she would get out of the apartment and buy a new one. That she would walk farther than the edge of her block and back and spend her last paper twenty, but that had been her daily goal for the past month. Dany failed it each day. And now she had to add a new couch to her twenty-twenty-three “to buy” list because she spilled curry on the cushion last night. Again. She couldn’t flip the cushion over because there was spaghetti sauce on the other side, from last week’s takeout. Her breakup had been hard. Harder than her girlfriend’s strap on, which she missed. She couldn’t figure out if it was the plastic dick or her girlfriend that she missed more. It made her feel better to say the girlfriend, because it makes her sound shitty to admit she missed a person’s phallic attachment more than them. But in this case, the person attached to the plastic contributing to her pleasure and to the decay of the environment also chose to cheat on her. With the strap-on. And then did not tell Dany until Dany asked how she could have gotten Chlamydia when both their past screenings had been clean. So maybe she wasn’t shitty for saying she missed sex but not the last person she had done it with. The girlfriend had left the strap-on at Dany’s place while she was away on business for three weeks, and Dany missed her, and FaceTime with the girlfriend proved more satisfying while undulating the plastic dick. The girlfriend was not great at emotional satisfaction, but this she did well. So when Dany had Chlamydia upon her girlfriend’s return to the apartment, and so did the girlfriend, Dany paced her kitchen yelling as the girlfriend sat at the island and spun her chair. The metal squeaked. A can of WD-40 was on her to-buy list. Now Dany sat on the couch that smelled strongly of yellow curry and pulled up her last message to her ex-girlfriend. A link to Pink News’ guide to cleaning your sex toys, which she scrolled through before peeling herself from the couch. Dumped her cold coffee down the sink, coating the bottom of the metal in grounds. Cleaned the vibrator sitting in the tissue on her bedside table. Recycled her empty antibiotic bottle. Showered. Stepped around dirty sweats on her floor to find clean jeans in her closet. Put on real shoes, not socks with grippies on the bottom, and drove to IKEA. She bought a mini French press, only one serving this time because her ex did not deserve leftover coffee even in spirit. She picked out a new couch, with black cushions instead of pale pink, to match her mourning and her new sense of style. Her girlfriend sucked her joy away, but not her need to reinvent herself every six months. That she invigorated. Dany got coffee on the drive home. It sat in her stomach, swishing like the occasional twinge of okay-ness amidst drownings. She crossed off the couch and the French press from the sticky note on her fridge and pulled out a box grater for her tofu. It was Tuesday, and tacos sounded like the only option. She would eat them at the counter, kicking her legs so her chair spun just a bit. The metal would squeak, but it would not be heard over the volume of the New Girl episode playing on Dany’s laptop. Her couch would be delivered tomorrow.
sarah rose ledet is an undergraduate at susquehanna university studying creative writing and publishing and editing. speculative fiction is the cave their writing calls home. one day, they hope to be paid to drink coffee and observe people on a park bench. you can find them on twitter @srledet02 and on instagram at @sarah.ledet.
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