Sarah Anne Strickley
During the socially-distant playdate, my neighbor and her sister emerge in gravity-defying bikinis and begin blasting the Grateful Dead while smoking a joint and oiling themselves. My husband says—quietly—to the father of the two masked children playing with our two masked children: I'm sorry. This is not usually a thong neighborhood. I'm not sure thong is the correct terminology. What we're observing as we sip iced tea mixed with frozen lemonade concentrate is a pair of neon tarzan bikinis. I don't want to explain how I know this information and so I complain instead about the neighbor's dog, Penny, a yappy miniature poodle. That dog is a total asshole, I say. Quietly.
The father of the kids says he knows how it goes with neighbors. He's a neighbor, he has neighbors. It's always a thing. Yes, I say, it's always a thing. Later, though, I take a walk with the dog and review the day in my head and I think: sure, it's always a thing, but is it always a thong? I know that I wouldn't behave the way the neighbor has behaved in the clear view of four small children, but is her behavior so egregious? The dog decides to indulge in some intense shrub sniffing, giving me leave to replay the scene in my head. I edit it, though, so that the neighbor and her sister hear me inadvertently snicker and they look across the yard and assess me. In my edit of the scene, I internally acknowledge that I have never and would never wear a tarzan bikini because I don't have and have never had the body for one. Their assessing gaze is accurate, but my return gaze delivers this proviso: I would never wear that even if I had the socially-authorized body to wear it.
What, haven't you ever seen a joint before? the neighbor asks in my revised imagining.
Her sister laughs. Inside my head a montage plays: various scenes in my life wherein I have indulged in more than an average quantity of illicit substances. Bongs, bowls, vape bags. Pot laced with THC crystals, pot laced with opium, pot laced with PCP. Edibles. Inside my head, I consider having myself say: I've smoked more joints in a week than you've ever seen in your life. But that's too obvious and so I consider having myself say: Whatever. And then I decide to have myself say: No, what's a joint? Can I try it? In a bratty, sarcastic voice. And then I realize that in the imagining my kids are there and I can't verbally taunt the neighbor about smoking pot in front of the kids and so I edit them out and then it's just the neighbor and her sister and they assess me (fat jealous bitch) and ask if I've ever seen a joint before and I tell them in an earnest voice that I have never seen a joint IRL and they laugh in a semi-taunting way and then the sister invites me over to "party" with them.
I realize the dog is now simply standing and waiting for me to recover from whatever weirdness has halted our walk. I decide to add a bonus block or two to the route so that I can return to this imagining and push the prospect of "partying" forward to its natural conclusion. The neighbor, I decide, wouldn't be thrilled about the fact that her sister has invited me over. What are you thinking? she might rasp. She won't want to share her weed or harsh her buzz with the likes of me (washed-up hag) but it will be too late because I'll be headed over there with an oversized beach towel. I'll be wearing a kaftan, which is stylish in an older art-lady way. Fucking Elizabeth Taylor wore kaftans. I'll plop down next to them and hit the joint a few times and say: Seedy.
They'll observe my proficiency with the procedures and become aware that they've misjudged me. I will be aware of their awareness. I would be well within my rights to give them a hard time, but I won't because I'm classy. The thing about hanging out with my neighbor and her sister and smoking pot in my imagination is that it will go better than it would in real life because (on a certain level) I'm disinterested in feeling even worse about myself than I already do. So, I let the sisters prattle on in my mind about how much they love this bar that plays only recordings of live performances (it's called Alive One) because they're purists who only want to hear live music and instead of suggesting that music isn't actually live if it's recorded, I reveal that I boned the owner of that bar in college. This is true, by the way, and not even my husband knows about it. We're honest with each other about our pasts, but this past is so embarrassing that I've tucked it behind many lesser revelations. He was into primal scream therapy at the time because he worshipped John Lennon, so my fake orgasms were always super loud, I say.
Oh, shit, says the neighbor. You're freaking hilarious. We have got to hang out with this chick again.
Totally, says the sister.
And there you have it: the peak indulgence of the re-imagining. The idea that we could all be friends! Back in reality, my dog is going bonkers because Penny is going bonkers behind the glass of the neighbor's storm door and I can see the neighbor standing in her kitchen, observing my dog pinwheeling on the leash, observing my obvious struggle to get her under control and I think: It's classless to Tarzan it up and smoke pot while blasting the Dead as children attempt to play peacefully nearby. You're in your 30s. You should have known better than to host beer pong parties at the peak of the pandemic. Do you remember the time Penny ran into our yard and the kids attempted to corral her and you screamed at them? I should have screamed right back at you. How in the holy hell do you have money for a Tesla? How can you afford the full-gut remodel you're doing on your kitchen? When you whine to your sister about how sick you are of being poor, what does that mean? You can't possibly think you're poor, can you? Look at me, I think of telling her: I'm in my forties and still checking Craigstlist for cheap used couches. I buy tampons in extreme bulk. Half-day summer camp for the kids will cost more than our mortgage this month. My parents will be the technical owners of our minivan until we manage to pay it off in a decade, at which point it will be valueless.
Fucking loser, she might say.
Dumb bitch, I might say.
The neighbor pads over to Penny and lifts her from the floor and I watch the dog's legs run like mad in air as the little asshole rages in her arms. And then somehow we're in my backyard and it's ten years later and the pandemic is long over. Penny is dead. The moon is a half-dunked cookie in a cirrus and she says: Can I tell you a secret? I boned the owner of Alive One too.