Thirty Eight

Jason says my name all the time. Like, all the time. My parents don’t call me by name unless they’re scolding me or referring to me to a friend. When my daddy is talking to me, he calls me Kiki, which was our old cats name. My mom calls me Possum Pie. I don’t think I call her anything, I just say something and she answers as if she’s who I’m addressing and sometimes she’s right and sometimes she isn’t.

        You would say my name infrequently—you saved it, precious, for special moments. You handled it carefully.

        Jason  and I read the same article in Psychology Today—or maybe it was a Cosmo or a Yahoo! News dating article—that said using someone’s name makes you more endearing to them. It was an article about getting what you want from people. I don’t know how to interpret the action when he does it. Is it to be endearing or manipulative?

        I guess its just weird to me that Jason plays so lax with my name. Somehow, when you died, I expected never to hear Riot again. Each time he says it, I feel invaded; manipulated.

        I feel uncomfortable calling people by name. It feels so personal. I called you Avery, sparingly, like your parents did and Jason did and everyone else did; mostly I called you Baby Love, which was special only to me. I called you by a million pet names over the years. I called you any number of pet names based on whatever I was thinking about at the time.

        In Scottish mythology- mythology concerning the Kingdoms of the Fey, to use someone’s given name is to control the very actions they take. I didn’t want to control you.

I called you Peaches, I called you ‘my hot Blonde Asian boy’ to my girlfriends before we were dating, I called you Pet when I wanted you to let me coddle you, I called you Baby with desperation in my voice when your fingers were teasing me somewhere else and I wanted them where they were supposed to be-- stroking me to finish.

        I called you Dodecahedron, Koala Bear, Sexy Bitch. I called you Patrick Star, I called you Doctor, I called you Thunder Boy, Kitty Kitty. I called you Fervor, Piglet, and Cloudling. You were Slut Monkey, you were Professor, you were Pharaoh, you were Chaos Theory, and you were Wiggum when you said something particularly dumb and adorable.

        I called you Ai Sama, Master Love, when you were irritable. I called you Captain, Angel, Doctor, Professor, or Lord depending on what show we were watching together at the time.

        When I was a feminist attacking the social messages of Disney movies, you called me Beauty and I called you Beast and I pretended that we’d have a happily ever after with some grotesque half beast children that I would feed raw meat and train with shock collars.

        When I was balls deep into High Fantasy, I called you Handsome Prince and you called me Queen Bee and you said you had a dream about me where I was a Drow maiden with black skin and white hair and you were a forest elf slave but you loved me and there were guns and cakes and a harp-man with a harpy hard-on.

        When we were writing a comic together, I called you Ace of Spades and you called me Six, like Six of Hearts and we never explained it to anyone.

        I called you Sensei and you called me Grasshopper. When the sex was vanilla, I pretended that you were my art teacher and I was your student and we weren't supposed to be doing this but we fell too hard for each other and you had to have me even though you'd lose your job.

        We were nerds with superpowers. I was Quantum Leap and you were The Mathemagician. I could teleport.

        You were every food, every sweet treat, every synonym for Darling.

        I was named I Love You and you were named I Love You Too.

        But saying Avery… that was saved for whispers, like “Shhh, Avery baby, it’ll be okay”, or “Ohmygod Avery harder”.

        You put all sorts of flowers in both of our hair. I pretended you were a merman.

        But I didn’t call you by the name on your birth certificate, which was Jun, which was such a perfect name. It either meant innocent and chaste or genius, depending on the character that was used, only I didn't ever know that.

        Because Riot was sacred, a prayer, an incantation, Avery was sacred too and Jun was therefore so sacred it was forbidden. Jason says that they threw it around at your funeral: Jun Sakamoto Jun Sakamoto, and no one said Avery.. it was like that whole part of you didn’t exist. 

        Sometimes—only sometimes way back when—you would say Riot outside of a certain context and I would fall so hard for you all over again.

        I remember. It was summertime and we spent the whole day in my back yard, soaking up sunlight and reading library books and tearing apart big crisp leaves and ripping up handfuls of mossy grass and watching the bugs crawl across each other’s skin, taking pride in how the other wouldn’t freak out because it was just a bug.

        And you said, “My God, Riot, just look at this,” and we were both so giddy, elated with the freedom afforded to adolescence, popping raspberries and malted milk balls into our mouths and kissing and giggling.

        Each name I called you had its own power over you. I called you Fairy King. I pretended you were a spell, you were glamoured human—maybe exiled, but maybe you just loved me enough to live the lie Ironside.

       

        I call Jason man, bro, and dude alternately. I call Jason by name when he calls me by name or when I’m trying to be poignant.

        “Riot, what are you doing?” he’ll ask me with disdain, for something totally innocuous. Something that does not call for First-Naming. I’ll reply, “Jason, I’m peeling this goddamn orange,” or whatever it is because it happens a lot.

        “Riot, you wanna go to Value Village? I want some sort of  80s tanktop, a UPS jacket, and a tacky wooden carving. A figurine like of a messy Geisha.”

        “Jason, put the knife down!”

        “Riot, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

        “Riot, I’m serious, don’t talk to that guy anymore.”

        “Riot, give me your phone. Who are you texting? Give it here!”

        “Riot, you can’t talk to these guys! What are you thinking?”

        “Riot! How can you be such a slut! Avery just died.”

        First Naming me like he even has the fucking right. But he’s right, right? I shouldn’t be so disrespectful. You deserve better from me. I’m disgusted with myself, twirling my hair when I talk to boys all flirty-like. It’s sick. I cut my bangs, first, uneven. Then I start chopping at the rest of my hair. Wild. Mad. I look at the mess I’ve made of myself.

         “Riot, shhh,” he leans and wipes something off my forehead. “Shh, I’m sorry. C’mere, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean whatever you think I meant.” He looks me over and he says he can fix it.

 

        “Riot, oh my god,” he chuckles and inhales really deep. His face says it all.  “You look so stupid with your hair like this,” he laughs cruelly.

        I am bald and he has just cut off all my hair.

        People who are mourning, they cut their hair.

        I was depressed because it was exactly a month ago today that you died, and I cut it bad. It is irreparable—patches against my scalp, long strands like I was literally a schizophrenic and my hair was some sort of painful delusion that I had to attack away. Jason cut his skin, I cut my hair and I did more lasting damage.

        Jason razors off the excess so it can grow out new.

        “When your hair is long, Riot Girl,” he takes my hands in his and strokes my skin. “When your hair is long again, that’s when you can be happy.”

        He tells me "it’s cute, you're like a blind mole rat." I recede into my sweatshirt hood and draw my knees upwards. I’m out of tears. But he knows I'm still pissed. Somehow he always knows.

        “Hey hey, shh, Riot. C’mon, I’m sorry. Seriously, you look fine. I still love ya, right? No one else matters.”

        Jason shaves off his head, too. The garbage can in my bedroom is tagged with grafitti from our Street Art phase, and now it is filled with so much black and brown hair.

        Jason looks beautiful and pure, like a monk. It isn’t fair. I look like a Cancer patient.

        I look decrepit,

        broken,

        like I am inside.

        I touch my fingers to his bronze temples. His hairless head is pale. I can feel the muscles there move as he swallows. I touch his throat and his collar bone, brushing off the hairs that cling there. I blow on them and watch bumps rise on his skin. It isn’t fair. He still looks like himself, but he looks stronger. I don’t even look like a person anymore.

        “You can tell people that you lost a bet,” Jason says with a shrug, noticing the way I avoid my own reflection but can’t seem to leave my head alone.

        My fingers go up to my head, instinctively. I can’t even twirl my hair. I pick at my skin instead. I bite all my fingernails and pick at my skin and scratch at my baldness and rip apart my cuticles with my teeth. I can’t twirl my hair and if you are looking down at me or up at me or out at my world from within my heart, you wouldn’t recognize me.

        I am marked, two dots by you, but I no longer look like the girl you took on dates to Tatami-filled sushi restaurants. I’m no longer the girl, wild and sexy, that took your virginity. I no longer look like the girl whose name you would whisper like a charm against my throat. I no longer look pretty or lovable. I am just a sad rat, a sad rat named Riot and no one calls me Baby Love anymore. No one calls me Beauty, Pixie or Six or Jane Lane or Buffy or Who like you did.

        My mom stops calling me Possum Pie, because she doesn’t want to compare me to a rodent, she doesn’t want to compare me to something that plays dead.

        She calls me Riot, in a gentle voice, a stern voice, a concerned voice, like I’m always in trouble.

        “Riot, you look fine,” she says, handing me the car keys so I can start unloading groceries.  I juggle bags filled with baguettes and produce and heavy cartons of milk and organic sweets. “You’re such a free spirit. I’ve always loved that about you. Not many girls your age would be willing to experiment with their look like that.”

        I don’t know how to explain that I am not a free-spirit. That I feel trapped, now. Bound, even. Cursed. I can’t be happy until this grows out. Jason said so.

        “Riot, I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Jason tells me.

        “I’ll be here,” I shrug. Bound. Trapped. Not your girl, anymore, Avery. Some weird new girl, fashioned and controlled and evolving next to this completely different person. This person who doesn’t know how to handle me. This Jason person, bald like me, who knows how I tick and how to control me but not how to care for me.

        “Riot, pick something to watch,” he says, and I do. I do everything he says.

        I call Jason by his first name, his given name. But I only call him by that one name. You had a million names, Avery, Baby Love. You were a million different things to me.