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Prologue
Avoid mixing alcohol with the internet.
– Marcella
Question 1: Full Legal Name
Taking another sip from my bottle of wine, I squint drearily at my laptop screen. My cursor blinks in the text box below question numero uno. Full…legal…name…
I swear into the glass when the answer hits me. “I totally know that one.”
After misspelling my name twice, I manage to input Marcella Reina Keyes.
It takes me another full minute to recall my birthday, but only because I’m a little too inebriated to remember it’s today.
August 8th.
Prime smack in the armpit of Georgia summer.
Behind me in the cramped living room of my overpriced garbage apartment, my feeble window AC unit coughs and chokes, none the wiser that my will to live rests solely upon its frail mechanical shoulders. There’s a fight taking place somewhere downstairs. Upstairs, my neighbor’s three children protest their bedtime. Loudly. With significant jumping.
If I weren’t so focused on filling out this form, I’d send a drunk text to my mother, apologizing for my existence. Bless that woman if I ever had the lung capacity to reach the octaves my neighbor’s kids are managing.
The cacophony reaches right through my noise-canceling headphones, which are blaring music directly into my ear cavities.
Maintaining such piercing sounds is an achievement, truly.
Question 6: Describe your perfect date.
The urge to put April 25 in reference to Miss Congeniality comes nearly as violently as the urge to put not August 8.
Thankfully, I come to my senses and recall that this question isn’t referring to a calendar date. It’s referring to a date date. Like, going to the movies. Or long walks on the beach.
Which.
For the record.
Took me twenty-six years to realize meant getting to know a person one-on-one. Not just having the inexplicable urge to get sand in your shoes and salt in your hair for a prolonged length of time. Apparently.
In case anyone’s wondering, I’ve had this knowledge for a marvelous four minutes.
Because, yes, I’m googling date ideas and wishing I could blame the absence of a clue on my half-full bottle of wine. In all reality, I don’t do much. I have never done much. I go to work. I come home. I play Stardew Valley with my best friends.
That’s it.
I’m not even out doing anything today because my goal in life is blissful anonymity, and birthdays are an antagonist of that noble effort. Being the center of attention just because I was born once upon a time is ridiculous. Even my darling friends know better than to so much as text me today.
Dates… Dates… Dates…
The few dates I’ve been on were wholly uneventful. Classic. Boring. Predictable.
Movies and coffee shops and just hanging out, with Netflix on.
Which is another thing that took me an embarrassing amount of time to understand.
Thankfully, the definition hit me like a bullet train when that guy from my high school’s hand found my waist. I got out of that scummy boy’s parent-free environment before his disgusting mouth reached mine. If I’m not mistaken, I threw the remote at him, too. He seriously didn’t even let me finish picking a movie.
What a louse.
