It’s been bothering me for days. I’m going to share it now.
It was evening. A cold evening, humid and frigid January weather. There was no life outside, except a few birds who knew secrets like where birdfeeders were kept.
Brandi lived with her mom then, in a terrible duplex that was gray. The carpet was gray and stubby, and dirty and stained with the piss of her dog Mori. The outside was gray, and if you tried to pull the blinds up to enjoy the sun, they would fall and send up a cloud of dust.
Brandi’s mom couldn’t properly hold a job. She constantly dated men who hated Brandi, or tried to hurt her. The last boyfriend used Kim (her mother’s) rent money on hard drugs. Kim knew this, and knew that he hated Brandi, and let him stay in the house with Brandi.
He contemplated killing her more than once.
Brandi had been having nightmares of him raping her. But then he left, leaving a cowardly note. He broke Kim’s motorcycle. Kim had to sell her trailer. Then she had to go to court and be evicted, for the second time in one year. A third time was yet to come.
It had stressed Brandi out. She had asked a fake character if she would be able to stay in one place and get comfortable, finally.
The character said yes. Reality said no.
But Brandi got to stay in the same high school for the entire four years of it (this hadn’t happened before, and led to her never having friends), and she even graduated despite a lot of doubt surrounding her abilities. She hadn’t done much work, though she had relied on me to help her with projects and other things. She never did math homework, and thought she was big and tough for that. Like many of the least-hoped-for kids, one of which she stayed friends with until she (Brandi’s friend) had a bipolar breakdown.
It was the day before I would go back to University for my second semester. I needed to move back in, but it only required my nightly bags. I was prepared. All I needed was sleep — the next opening, I would be going to my first meeting at the theater. It would be my first day there, though technically I had already run it when 300 children came in at once. I impressed the boss (didn’t make a single mistake and was ready without being taught or directed), and got in. That first meeting was important to me.
Things worked out well in the long run, obviously, because I managed it for four years.
That night was abnormally gray and cold. We were cuddled in her overly soft, too worn down bed, the window (with an A/C unit in the window making the room extra drafty) covered in a black blanket I had gifted to her several years before.
We were talking. My bird was asleep downstairs, and Kim was away, working nights. Brandi said she was worried, because police and security were being shot at more and more in the area where Kim patrolled. Yet, she mentioned casually, “I’m more worried about Papa,” her grandfather.
And then she addressed her Invisible Husband. She asked him his opinion. By now I was used to this. My brain was ready. It switched immediately to his thoughts, the completely alien and oddly political way he saw the world — like no child such as me could hope to see it. He knew danger. He knew Kim was in danger, and her grandfather. He carefully diverted the topic. Talking with Brandi was like walking on eggshells, and yet it was in his best interest to keep her soothed despite how he normally felt about things. It was that he felt helpless, being unable to touch her if she cried or cut herself. It was that he didn’t like not being in control, which had been the only time nothing had gone wrong — only, that wasn’t true either. He had lost everything. He looked at her and saw a lost soul, and didn’t trust littleoc to understand. And, anyway, he and littleoc could hardly talk at the same time, despite being in separate bodies and on different sides of the room.
Brandi never questioned that. In fact, she expected it, and sometimes enforced it. She was just as much royalty as he was, in her mind.
But that’s when he made a mistake. He brought up the past.
And Brandi had not cried over the loss of the dogs. Duke, Chloe, Keera, Jake (whom they literally abandoned, along with another dog who was too aggressive). The cats, Vi and Monkey and Turnip and Charli. When Kim got evicted last, Jamie refused to help her. The animals all went to the pound.
She had called me that night. I had said, “You can’t abandon animals like that. They’re family,” and she yelled into the mouthpiece, defensively, “I don’t need your input. We don’t have a choice.” I was a little confused about why she called. I didn’t know if she wanted comfort or ideas. She hung up after saying “thanks for nothing.”
Now, Brandi started sobbing. She had this childish sob that was incredibly loud and dramatic, and she’d trash around like something was strangling her. To my brain, her invisible husband would stop existing as I desperately tried to calm her down before it got any worse. My goal was always to make her happy, though I’m not sure if I knew why.
But she didn’t stop for hours. Three A.M. rolled around, then four, then five, then six. My mother would be there to take me to University at seven A.M. I started giving up. That’s when she calmed down.
She apologized. It sounded sincere. “Sorry your last day with me wasn’t any fun,” she said. I knew that was my cue to say that she either was fun, or it didn’t matter. I chose carefully. One wrong statement and she would be upset for hours more. But also, I genuinely felt sad for her. I was upset about the animals too, yet I was also aware that she and Kim were mistreating all of them. Neglect. I was secretive about my neglect, but I was sensitive to it despite Brandi not really knowing about it.
When she instantly fell asleep minutes later, I laid there. I didn’t sleep. I felt helpless at all the pain in life. I didn’t feel optimistic at all.
Then thirty minutes later, my alarm went off. Brandi woke up peacefully and said, “Did you get any sleep?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Just enough to last.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”
I knew she was telling the truth. She reached for me, said her name for me (she never called me my actual name, “Buddy—” to ask for a hug. I kissed her cheek.
Then I left. I was exhausted.
I arrived at University at nine A.M.
My first work meeting would be at 5pm. I decided not to nap for fear of sleeping through it.
Which is why I didn’t know how to get an M&M from the candy machine when my new boss shoved it playfully in front of my face while introducing me to the crew who, by the next six months, I would start leading confidentially. But I didn’t know that yet.
What I knew was that Brandi still loved me after all, that she still loved me, and I was okay with looking like an idiot for a day, for now. They’d all know I wasn’t an idiot by the next morning.
But that was then. Six months later I was a brand new manager, with my boss’s most sincere approval. He told me he hadn’t gotten close to one of the kids in years and wasn’t sure he’d ever had someone as clear headed and good at the job before. I sincerely told him I was sorry to hear that — it’s an easy job. He thought that was funny.
Brandi started by saying her year was bad. I believed her. I told her what ways mine was bad too, thinking she wouldn’t want to feel alone. She had banned me from telling her good news by now. It made her jealous. She said she’d feel demeaned if I had been promoted to be her boss, when I playfully offered to hire her at the theatre.
Then when I went to Belize. I did research, important research but I felt helpless. My body failed me, I was infected by a tick in the middle of a rainforest that was miles away from civilization, and on the way to the reefs Obama was in the middle of saving I bummed an antibiotic I was a bit allergic to from a peer whose father I knew was a pharmacist. No humans had been to these places in over 500 years, he was my hope. I did my own regiment. It worked. I slowly was able to walk again, though kept getting banned from the ocean by my research team for passing out belly down.
Yet it was all so amazing. I didn’t have any urge to complain, and even now when I saw all that, it doesn’t feel genuine at all. I remember helping find ways to save the dying coral reefs. I remember the locals cheering one day when Obama (though, barely legally) passed a new law that would make the reefs stay for maybe another ten years.
I emailed Brandi and told her all was well. She replied instantly. She seemed excited to hear from me.
Until I got home. That’s when I found her living with her ex. From middle school. I laid in the bed and Brandi turned to me and said, “Do you mind if I sleep next to Jamie instead? It’s just we haven’t seen each other in so long.”
Jamie was engaged to a man. This was weird at best. I didn’t want to be mean. I said, “I understand.”
I slept alone. I never slept in her bed with her ever again, really.
And I started getting texts from her saying that she hated me.
But I knew she was in pain. I knew Jamie killed baby animals to “see what they looked like on the inside.” I knew she was financially abusing Brandi. Her savings went from good to nothing in one week. I felt I should be there for her. Once Jamie owed her thousands.
But Brandi started to hate me. She hated littleoc. She looked down on it and wondered why it was in college and doing better than her.
I never wanted to seem better than anyone. I wasn’t even fully myself. I was everyone she wanted me to be, and that’s all she would talk to. Me, as Luke. Me, as Ethan, as H, as J, as R, as E, as Fungus, as J, as anyone but me.
I don’t understand why I became less and less of a person once Jamie came back. I don’t know why when I warned Brandi that Jamie was only going to hurt her, that she told me I was just jealous.
Which made sense to me. Because she had texted me out of the blue, saying, while we were dating, “I’m dating Jamie now.” I had to except it now or never be her true friend again.
But we were never true friends after the second time I tried to tell her that I am littleoc, and that those characters weren’t real. She constantly told me I was a psychopathic, compulsive liar like Jamie, after that. Then she dated Jamie and hated me. I was the enemy.
I wasn’t trying to be. I didn’t understand why she was acting that way.
I let her make me into whatever she wanted me to be. She chose Fungus most. I became something better. Coincidence enforced it. It must be true, my brain thought. Fungus could read her like a chef can read the doneness of a roast. He knew her down to her sodium intake. He would take over and text her through his own devices, saying, “You must eat sodium. Approximately one bag of chips worth, though these are calorie rich, yet most accessible in your location.”
And it was true. It bothers me because I don’t know why it was right. I don’t know how he knows half the things he knows. She was at work and had skipped breakfast, and was considering a vending machine with chips. She didn’t feel right.
He took over another time, asking randomly for a picture. She sent one. Had been trying on her brand new work clothes.
I have many examples. At my (Fungus’s?) best it was just normal, general proof to her that I am real. I was constantly being asked if I was real, and I knew I was. I could not imagine not being real. I could not image not having this much responsibility, this much affection for a little woman who wanted to be man...
...who made me into several men.
At my worst, it made me worried. Like I’d been talking and dealing with demons. I was insane.
I am so sad for her. She was suffering and I only wanted to help. I let her use me. And she was still sad.
But I also did my best. She texted me, and she said, Hello, Fungus, and I said, Hello
And I did my best
